Rough Trade
by Velocity Girl1980
Summary: Back on the Grid but still coming to terms with his past, Lucas is working hard to regain the trust of his colleagues, when the death of an old friend has unforetold consequences. Meanwhile, a trickle of illicit diamonds smuggled from West Africa leads to the streets of London, drawing the team into the dark heart at the core of the glamorous diamond trade.
1. Therapy?

**A/N: I apologise for the sense of deja vu this will incite in anyone who caught the final chapter of the last story before it vanished. That chapter was laying the foundations for this story, as a follow on. Now, that story will follow this one. Thanks for reading, reviews would be welcome.**

* * *

**Chapter One: Therapy? **

"A letter, Lady Pearce."

Ruth carried on walking through Thames House reception without breaking her pace. She and Harry had spent the last two weeks honeymooning in Tuscany and now they were paying the price with a fortnight's worth of paperwork to catch up on. She sighs to the joys of working overtime on a Grid where everyone else has gone home. At least Harry was still in his office, she wasn't completely alone. In fact, she never would be again. She smiled at the thought and hugged the recently purchased bag of sandwiches close to her chest.

"A letter, Lady Pearce!"

Ruth stopped dead in her tracks, nearly dropping the bag in the process. She heard the girl the first time, but only just realised she was addressing her. Flushing deeply, she about turned and backtracked to the reception desk where the young girl held the large envelope out towards her.

"Please just call me Ruth," she sheepishly requested. "Because I will never get used to being called Lady Pearce!"

"Sorry, Ruth," the girl replied, handing over the letter. "For a minute there I thought I was gonna have to curtsey!"

The mere thought of it sent a shiver of horror down Ruth's spine; quite apart from the fact that she was still using her maiden name. Thanking the girl, she tucked the envelope under her arm and headed towards the pods. Once inside, she dropped the sandwich bag on Harry's desk. The noise jolted him out of his bureaucracy coma and he looked up at her with a smile. Handing the envelope over, she said: "don't get too excited, it's probably just more paperwork."

* * *

Where did she get that photo of his father? Lucas distracted himself from that stubborn ghost by glancing over the children's toy box in the corner. Discoloured Crayolas were scattered near dog eared sketch books and a knee high, greying chalk board with a plastic clock face in the bottom left corner. A balding, one-eyed rag doll and a naked Barbie whose nylon tresses were standing on end; all in a soup of mismatched lego bricks and chipped wooden blocks. Were they supposed to help traumatised children talk? He suppressed a shudder and looked back at Lydia, who was sitting in an over-stuffed armchair with her clipboard on her knees; making him wonder how many boxes he was ticking. Her hands were folded in her lap and she smiled benignly at him, peering through gold-rimmed granny glasses, eyes magnified by the bifocal lenses. Everything about her was soft and inoffensive, unobtrusive with carefully cultivated airs of professional sensitivity. In other words, she treated him like he was made of glass, and there was something cold and calculating about the way she did it. The only times he ever felt mad was when he came here, every Monday evening after work for an hour long session. Maybe, he thought, he should tell her that; maybe the irony would raise a real smile?

Lucas lifted his cup of tea from off the coffee table and sipped at it to wet his mouth.

"I don't talk about my father precisely because I loved him," he finally answered her last question. "Can you understand that? That for me to continue in this job, in this life that I lead, I needed to protect him. The best way to do that was to sever ties. He died while I was in Russia, as it happens…"

His words trailed off. Lydia's inscrutability unnerved him whenever he made a big revelation. He didn't realise how much he relied on approval or disapproval until Lydia starved him of both. She just sat there asking pointed questions, making no judgements to the point where he sometimes wondered whether she was even listened to his answers at all. In Russia, anything he said was met with anger or violence; at work, big revelations were met with varying degrees of dread. To be met with nothing was new, and he was yet to decide how to handle it.

"I can understand that, Lucas," she finally replied, hinting for the first time towards what she was thinking. "But I find it interesting that you have had two other strong male presences in your life, beside your biological father."

_Let me guess,_ Lucas thought to himself, _but I think you want to reveal me to myself; so go ahead…_

"Oh, really?" he asked, taking another sip of lukewarm tea.

Lydia nodded, her expression suddenly thoughtful. "Sir Harry Pearce," she replied, naming the first. "And, rather more interestingly, Vaughan Edwards."

Lucas choked on the last mouthful of his drink, accidentally sucking it into his lungs; it was like being water boarded with sweet tea. Harry, he could accept. It was true. Then, he expected Oleg Desharvin or, perhaps, even Arkady Kachimov or someone else equally perverse and ill-suited. Then he expected that old spiel about Stockholm Syndrome. But Vaughan Edwards was a real curveball and he had to admire her for that.

* * *

Harry reached inside the envelope and selected a paper at random from amongst the many inside, like it was some sort of lucky dip. Ruth had gone to make them both a coffee and, whatever was inside, it would fill the time until she returned. When the chosen paper slid free of its confines, he looked it over carefully. His green eyes scanned the first few lines of the official Government document before backtracking and starting over. Before he'd finished, he put it to one side and returned to the envelope. This time, he looked for something specific. After a second, he withdrew a colour photograph of a corpse. The man's pale, waxen skin was scored by a livid, purple jagged line running from the breast bone to the lower rib cage. X-shaped stitches held the fatal wound together. But the thing that struck Harry most was that the eyes were still open. He could see the blue of the iris peeping out, almost demurely from beneath lowered lashes.

"Anything exciting?" asked Ruth, placing a steaming mug of coffee in front of him.

He hadn't heard her entering and gave a quick gasp of surprise. She sat at the opposite side of his desk and took another bite of her sandwich as he slid the picture over to her. Normally, he would wait until after she'd eaten, but Ruth was used it by now. She'd seen worse before breakfast on some days.

"Bloody hell, Harry!" she said, gulping. "Is that…"

"Vaughan Edwards," Harry nodded, finishing her sentence. "He was murdered in the prison yard while on exercise."

Edwards had been flown back to Senegal five months previously, as soon as the truth about the Dakar bombing emerged. That other Lucas North had been extradited to Senegal from his prison in Liberia, too. To the same prison, it would seem. Harry looked across the desk, towards Ruth who was still gnawing at her sandwich. When she finished, she put the rest to one side.

"I don't wish anyone dead, Harry. But my only real regret is that he didn't face justice." She shrugged then, and added: "But at least they have the truth."

A poor substitute for justice, under the circumstances, or so Harry thought.

"I can understand why the guards looked the other way when the attack happened," he conceded. "But you're right. He never did face up to what he'd done and now, he never will."

"Still, they've got Dylan Hughes haven't they," said Ruth, thoughtful. "The other Lucas North, that is."

"I remember who he is," replied Harry. "I'll not forget him in a hurry. But Ruth, that's just it."

When he elaborated no further on just what 'that' was, Ruth sat back in her chair and regarded him closely. "What?" she asked, already feeling a cold flicker of dread in the pit of her stomach.

* * *

"Does it surprise you to hear me say that, Lucas?"

Lydia gave him that searching look again. He slowly recoiled, like a snail retreating into its shell. Nervously, he ran a hand through his hair, mussing it up at the back. After taking a moment to marshal his thoughts, he attempted to explain his precise feelings about the relationship he once had with Vaughan Edwards.

"He was never a father figure to me," he replied, emphatically. "But I've been thinking about this constantly since … well, since it all resurfaced. The other person, Hughes, probably saw him as a father figure. I mean, he was out there alone, with no family or friends. He was adrift in the big wide world, looking for some purpose; he latched on to Vaughan. Or, that's what I believed at the time."

"What do you believe now?"

Lucas shrugged. "I don't think I know what to believe anymore."

That was the truth of it. He'd been caught up in a mesh of lies and deceit – deceit he had actively participated in – that he no longer had a sense of what was real. He was guessing, extrapolating from what he had since learned of the other Lucas. All he had found out was that his parents' divorce when he was young, his mother died when he was thirteen and he left university in 1988, promptly leaving for Africa on what was meant to be a yearlong work contract to teach English as a foreign language. That, and his real name, Lewis Norwood, was all Tariq had been able to help him unearth. The enigma of the living ghost remained.

* * *

"So the artist formerly known as Lucas North actually did it?" asked Ruth, brow raised quizzically. She'd had one phone conversation with the Artist Formerly Known As. In exchange for information about the Dakar bombing, she had offered to negotiate a relaxation in his prison regime. Looking back with the benefit of hindsight, she realised it might not have been such a good idea. However, she only did it on the understanding that the relaxations applied only to his time in Liberia. Once he arrived in Senegal, all of a day after the arrival of Edwards, it would be back to over-crowded cells and sharing a lice-infested bunk bed with ten other guys.

"Well, the only reason we got him to talk was because he and Edwards had had a fierce falling out over something," Harry reminded her. "What I want to know is, did the prison authorities put him up to it? If they did, what is our old friend getting in return?"

"A relaxed sentence and nothing more, surely?" Ruth quickly answered. "Nothing can take away the fact that it was he who planted that bomb. Edwards may have triggered it, but it was the fake Lucas who put it there for the triggering. They're equally culpable."

Harry, however, didn't share her confidence. His expression was measured, more cautious. Looking back at Ruth over steepled hands, he weighed up his response carefully.

"On the surface, that's what you'd think," he eventually replied. "Search a little deeper and god knows what you might find. We need to prepare for worse."

Ruth looked incredulous. "You're not seriously suggesting they've released him?"

Harry shrugged. "We can't rule anything out," he reasoned. "So we should rule everything in. Including a potential release deal."

"And if he is released," said Ruth, "what's to say he won't simply vanish underground again? Could our Lucas be in any danger?"

"Again, rule it in," replied Harry. "But, if I'm right, the last thing we need is a man like that on the loose and getting up to his old tricks. I want him watched. In the meantime, Lucas has his meeting with Loopy Lydia. I'll pick him up and break the news. Will you be okay here by yourself for half an hour?"

Ruth replied with an affirmative nod. "You really need to stop calling her that, Harry. You'll forget yourself and call her that to her face."

"I already do," he deadpanned.

* * *

Lydia looked almost as relieved as Lucas felt when she wrapped their session up. She set her clipboard aside and, with almost disappointment, Lucas noticed there were no boxes on the sheet at all. Collecting his jacket from where he'd folded it beside him on the sofa, he stood up and bid her farewell. She now had a whole seven days in which she could pick over the emotional entrails he'd spilled during the session and he found himself wondering whether or not she enjoyed her job. Could she just switch off? Or did she subconsciously absorb the complex head-fuckery he and his colleagues offload on her, day in and day out?

"Next Monday, Lucas," she said, just as he reached the door. "I want to talk to you more in depth about Russia. Your feelings about being left for eight years and who you blame for it. Is that okay?"

If she did have any job satisfaction, he thought, she'll be in for a euphoric session next Monday.

As soon as he made it outside, he leaned against the wall of the discreet psychiatrist's office and breathed in deeply. He'd stuffed his father's photo into his pocket on his way out. Before setting off for the tube station, he looked both ways along the street. It was growing dark, with only a few late stragglers trudging the pavements. The rains had fallen while he was inside, the streets were wet and glistening slickly under the streetlamps. Lucas zipped his jacket all the way up and jammed his hands deep in his pockets before setting off at a brisk pace. A minute later and a car rounded the corner behind him, the headlamps throwing his shadow across the wet pavement as it righted its position and drew to a halt beside him. Lucas stopped to see who his kerb crawler was, when the passenger door was opened from within.

"Lucas, get in."

The interior light made Harry look deathly, casting shadows across his eyes. For a moment, Lucas considered telling his boss what Lydia said about their relationship, but in reality it would be quite laughable. Instead, he climbed into the back of the vehicle, all curiosity about the impromptu pick-up. Without a word of explanation, Harry started fishing around inside his jacket, producing an envelope and handing to Lucas. In the meantime, the driver started up the engine and pulled away from the kerb.

"Vaughan Edwards was killed in prison," said Harry, with a nod to the envelope now in Lucas' hands he added: "Happy snaps."

"He's dead?"

For just the briefest of moments, a pang of regret gripped him inside. It was gone in an instant, but he couldn't deny it was there. It would have been the same for any man he'd known, killed suddenly and unexpectedly.

"It happened a week ago," Harry explained. "Do you not want to look?"

He didn't realise he was still holding the envelope with the photographic proof. Inside he found just one picture, but it was enough to confirm the truth of what Harry was telling him. He felt nothing, just a peculiar blankness; even when Harry told him who was responsible. Looking out of the window of the car, he pushed the envelope and photo back in Harry's direction. Lost in his own spiralling thoughts, Lucas did not notice the uncomfortable silence. He could almost feeling that deep, intense gaze boring into him. Any minute now and Harry would be nagging at him to reveal his feelings, just like Lydia. It was as though once everyone knew you were getting therapy, they all wanted to have a go. Everyone's an expert.

"We're going to the George," Harry declared. "We need a drink."

Or maybe not. Lucas raised a grin and looked at Harry. "You know, for a minute there I thought…"

"What?" Harry asked. "You didn't think I was…" he trailed off, leaving the unpalatable unsaid.

"It's just, Lydia. She's having a bad effect on me."

Harry grimaced like a bulldog licking piss off a thistle. "I like to think you know me better than that by now."

"Yeah, possibly."

Through all his doubts about everyone, at least that should have been a given. For the remainder of the journey, Lucas turned to the rain spattered window and watched the streets roll by until the car park of the George swung into view. Its façade providing a reassuring beacon of stability among the every shifting shadows of their cruel world.


	2. Joy of Life

**Thank you to everyone who has read and reviewed this story, your feedback is greatly appreciated.**

* * *

**Chapter Two: Joy of Life**

They always looked so nervous when it was their first time. Ros could see the man standing by the joy of life fountain, looking in each and every direction. Jumpy and jittery, he couldn't seem to hold still. He may as well be wearing a big sign saying "I am a spy". To end his misery a little sooner, she quickened her pace as she walked the circumference of the fountain; glancing into the poisonous green waters, keeping him in her line of vision until he was blocked by the statues in the centre. A few paces later and he reappeared again. This close up, she could see the package in his hands. If that was meant for her, she'd have to teach him the dead drop as a matter of urgency. Luckily for them both, however, Hyde Park was relatively quiet. It was Tuesday morning, too early for the dipsos and too late for the dog walkers.

As she drew closer her footsteps drew his attention, the man's restive gaze flitted onto her and he clocked her looking back at him. Eye contact was made, just enough to make him wonder whether she, Ros, was the one. She, naturally, had already checked him out, but as a first timer, he had no idea about her. He quickly looked away again, as though worried he may be mistaken and didn't want to appear rude by gawping at a lone woman walking in the park.

"Christopher Goodwin?" she asks, although she's certain he's the same man as in the photograph Ruth showed her. Tall, sparsely built, early forties and greying brown hair.

He immediately jumps to attention. "Yes, are you from M-"

"Yes, I am," she curtly cuts over him. "To the bench."

Ros neither stopped nor slowed down, expecting him to follow. But her footsteps were not joined by his.

"Is – is that code for something?" his voice sounded from behind her.

Still with her back to the man, Ros rolled her eyes.

"Yes," she briskly replied. "Code for: 'my feet are killing me and I want to sit down.'"

Still without turning; ignoring his stammered apologies, Ros sat on the nearby bench. Eventually, Christopher joined her. When he was finally up to speed, Ros showed her ID card, proving where she had come from.

"So, you have some information you think might be of interest to us?"

He nodded. "Yes…" he trailed off, his brow furrowing deeply. "I mean, I think I do. I don't know. I don't know if I'm doing the right thing, or if I'm going to the right people. I mean, I-"

"Mister Goodwin," Ros cut over him again. "Just tell me what it is and if we can't help you, I'll put you on to those who can."

That seemed to calm him down. He took a few deep breaths as he handed her the package. It was just a disc. A plain DVD disc he'd probably burned off himself.

"You probably already know I'm head of public relations at D'Vere's jewellers," he began, glancing sidelong at her.

"Yes, congratulations on the promotion last month," she replied, revealing just how much she already knew. She was curious about this man, it wasn't often that someone in the diamond trade had a conscience.

"Well, that's just it," he explained. "They sent me out to their mine in Sierra Leone and, well, the footage is on that disc."

Ros hid her disappointment. "If you have concerns about third world working conditions, the Fair Trade Foundation are probably your best bet-"

"No! It's not that; well, okay, that's part of it," he replied, quickly as though he'd anticipated such a brush off. "What I need to tell you is that, on record, D'Vere's does not mine diamonds from Sierra Leone. What I found out is that they're mining diamonds at a fraction of their market value from an illegal mine – ten miles north of Freetown – run by ex-soldiers who fought in the Civil War. The diamonds are smuggled to Antwerp, Switzerland or, if Europe is too risky, Liberia. The rough diamonds are registered there, given the paper work and documentation there, and that is where we officially – er, on paper, if you like – buy them from; that becomes their new country of origin. It avoids awkward questions about blood diamonds."

Now Ros was interested. "But, the Kimberly Process filters out such illegally mined or conflict diamonds, doesn't it?" She knew she sounded naïve, but she had to ask. All she knew for sure was that the Kimberly Process was intended as such, and that Angola and Sierra Leone were both signatory countries to that trade agreement. Understandable, given the sheer brutality of the diamond wars fought in both countries during the 80s and 90s.

"The Kimberly Process isn't worth the paper it's written on," he stated, turning to look at her fully. Now that he'd said what he needed to say, he seemed more confident. "It is down to the consumer to ensure the diamonds they buy are Kimberly certified. And, as I said, companies can get around it by buying the diamonds in one place, but forging their origin elsewhere. Even places in Europe where no diamonds are harvested. No one is asking questions."

"Did you hear what the proceeds of these diamonds is being spent on?" she asked, keeping her voice low.

Christopher ran trembling hands through his hair and sighed. "I'm sorry," he replied, remorsefully. "I didn't think, I… I just didn't know what to do. All I could think of was secret filming and it's all on that disc-"

"You've done well, Christopher," she assured him after seeing his continued nerves. "You've done the right thing."

It sounded more like it was a job for Six, rather than Five. But it didn't matter, she would get it to the right people once she'd checked out the footage on the disc.

"Thanks," he said, flatly.

"Look, Christopher, with the information you've given me," she said. "You're more than likely to get a call from us, or Six, asking you to dig up more information. You'll have to go back to work, act completely normal, say nothing to anybody and turn spy on your own employer. The risks are huge. Do you think you can do that?"

"Yes," he replied, visibly pulling himself together. "I can't do nothing. Not after what I saw. Watch what's on that disc, and you'll understand."

Without having yet viewed the footage, Ros just responded with a brief nod of agreement.

"This is it, for now," she said, getting back to her feet. "We'll be in touch."

* * *

Ruth leafed through the pages of the file she was reading, resolutely ignoring Harry as he passed between his office and the kitchen, or crossed the Grid to speak with one of the other agents. She could feel his gaze raking over her every time he passed, but she kept her head down and, without realising, read the same line of text several times without actually taking in a single iota of its meaning. A loose strand of hair slipped free of its clip, as she sorted the problem Lucas North extricated himself from Harry and fixed her with a red-eyed, pale-faced smile. _'He's hung over'_, she thought as she watched closed the space between them, _'good'._

He flopped down in the vacant seat beside her own and wheeled himself the rest of the way to her side. Ruth didn't particularly want to have to look at Lucas, either. But he was being persistent. Head propped in hand, he was leaning across the desk looking at her imploringly, attempting to grind her down and, despite herself she was soon struggling against the rising tide of reluctant amusement.

"It's not working, so go away," Ruth sighed, flipping the file closed.

"I'm sorry, it was all my fault," said Lucas.

"Oh, put a gun to his head, did you?"

Harry said he'd be half an hour. Instead, he came rolling home past midnight and half cut. She realised the death of Vaughan Edwards was hardly cause for full mourning clothes and lowering of the flags to half-mast, but she didn't see what there was to go out drinking in celebration, either.

"It wasn't like that," Lucas assured her. "We needed to sort some things out."

Ruth turned to him with a quiet sigh of resignation. Opening the file again, she nudged it over to him and pointed to the first page. Whatever was happening with Harry and her, it would have to wait. Because while she and Harry were honeymooning, Lucas had been relying on Tariq to dig for dirt on the fake Lucas. The young techie had done well, better than Ruth had expected, but there was still only germs of truths and half-stories embedded in a finely cultivated legend. It needed the Analyst's mind to pluck the reality from a tangle of lies.

Lucas looked down at the file, a dark shadow obscuring the clarity in his deep blue eyes as he read the name on the front. His demeanour changed; Ruth could sense him going rigid in his seat as he read over what she had so far. She had gained access to the CIA database, through her magic portal, to dig up more information on the fake Lucas. They had been watching him, but never said anything about the legend. Then there were the prison records, such as they were. She had spent the day making sense of it all.

"There's things we already knew in there," Ruth explained, pointing to sentences she'd high-lighted in pink marker. "He was gun-running between Liberia and Sierra Leone during the late '90s, at the height of the wars in that region." She paused again, to unroll a detailed map of West Africa. Again, there were parts that she'd high-lighted. "Here is Senegal. Once he was finished there, I would say he travelled South through Guinea, which shares a border with both Sierra Leone and Liberia. Through Guinea, he would have had easy access between the two warzones. Large areas of the border were unpatrolled, allowing him to pass through undetected, despite the weapons he was carrying."

"But that was then," Lucas stated, turning to look at her. "What's he up to now?"

Ruth took a deep breath and replied with a rueful shrug.

"That, I haven't been able to find out," she confessed. "He could still be in prison, but I haven't been able to contact the Senegalese authorities yet. If he is out, then he won't be using the Dylan Hughes legend anymore, seeing as he knows that we know about that one."

Lucas' shoulders were hunched up as he squinted back down at the map. He was restless and tense, but small wonder given how mysterious the situation was. "What about the Somali link?" he asked. "Is there anything there?"

"Not after the bombing in Dakar, no," she replied. Ruth carefully pulled the file out from under Lucas' elbow and selected another page. "There. Hughes, who was using the Lucas North legend at that time, was running errands for the Somalis. But that's the opposite side of the continent. I can only surmise that all links to them were severed as soon as the bombing happened. Lucas North, to all intents and purposes, was dead by then."

Lucas ran both hands through his hair, leaning back in his seat. Ruth could see he was still struggling to make sense of everything, as well as growing increasingly frustrated at the lack of information. He looked paler, now. His eyes were bloodshot and lined with dark circles, suddenly making him look older than his years. It was the uncertainty that was getting to him. _'Our doubts are traitors,'_ she thought to herself.

"We may yet be worrying over nothing," Ruth tried to assure him.

He tried to smile, but managed only a twitch at the corners of his mouth. A reply on his lips that was cut off by the arrival of Ros, stalking purposefully across the Grid. She had him fixed in her line of vision. "Lucas, you're needed," she said, jerking her head towards one of the private offices. With a final nod of thanks, he got up and followed the Section Chief off the Grid. Ruth kept her eye on him as he went, wondering what stone she could possibly upturn next.

* * *

Lucas closed the door behind him, triggering the light sensor to reveal a small, cramped space – no bigger than a library cubicle – with a desktop computer locked on the desk. Ros bent over it, tapping in the password without a word of explanation. Space was so limited, he had to press his back against the door to allow her room and kept his gaze fixed firmly on the ceiling. When Ros straightened up again, she looked at him frowning as she reached a moment of indecision.

"Ruth might need to see this," she said, thinking aloud.

Lucas shrugged. "It could get rather intimate with three of us in here," he pointed out.

Evidently, that changed Ros' mind again. She simply reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a DVD before slotting it into the disc tray on the PC unit. While she worked, she gave him no further information.

"Sit," she curtly instructed him, at length.

The two chairs were crammed so close together their legs were interlocked. When Lucas tried to move the one on the left, the one on the right came with it, banging Ros' shins as it went. He stammered a hasty apology over her hissed curses and flushed deeply. They had barely exchanged a word since he arrived back on the Grid, just over a fortnight previously. The tension between them was almost a physical thing. To distract himself from that awkwardness, he focused on separating the chairs and getting them both seated in as much comfort as possible.

Meanwhile, the show had begun. The media player flashed up on the screen, loading the content of the disc.

"It came from an asset at D'Veres," Ros explained as the footage began. "The Asset was sent to Sierra Leone to organise some company affairs and filmed secretly."

Sierra Leone again; the country was beginning to feature far too prominently in Lucas' life for him to be comfortable. The picture was grainy, at first. It blurred before focusing on a row of miners, shackled at the ankles in a vast human chain. They were as poor as the mud and shit they sifted through, dressed in rags and knee deep in a clay grey swamp. Every so often, the lens of the camera – obviously a mobile phone – was obscured by the thumb of the cameraman, blocking the red light to keep the filming secret. After a second or two of darkness, the camera re-focused on the men who patrolled the perimeter of the mine: armed to the teeth with machine guns, they occasionally stopped and lashed out at random workers with the butts of the weapons they held. Lucas studied their faces as best he could. There were no westerners or white men among them and they spoke in heavily accented English, but what they were saying was lost in the poor quality audio. In the background, occasional shots could be heard, but none of the workers on screen fell.

"Whatever that is, it's highly illegal," Lucas remarked, before the footage had ended. "Who are they supplying?"

"D'Veres," she replied, flatly. "My Asset explained it all. The mine the diamonds from here-" she broke off, pointing to the screen. "But they register the origin of the diamonds somewhere else entirely. Usually Liberia. So something's not right about the whole thing. What do you think?"

Lucas considered what he'd seen. If D'Vere's were profiting from an illegal mine being used to fund god knows what, then it was their business. Because they didn't know what it was funding, for all they knew it was funding terrorist attacks on British streets, he knew he had to make it their business. He said as much to Ros, who listened attentively, smiling in satisfaction. When she didn't say anything further, however, he felt his spirits lift.

"Are we going under cover again?" he asked, feeling hopeful.

He hadn't been undercover since before his trip to Tring and the Vaughan Edwards business. Itching to get back to doing what he did best, he was chomping at the bit to get going already, despite not knowing what they were going undercover as. Whoever Ros' asset was, they could surely get them both within the organisation. Ros, however, was still undecided. She was resting one arm against the back of her chair, looking at him without seeing him and lost in her thoughts.

"Definitely undercover," she replied, finally. "But we need to go over it with the others. Leave it with me for now."

* * *

That lunchtime, Harry approached Ruth's desk cautiously. He gripped the paper bag containing the Danish pastry like a shield, holding it in front of him so it would be the first thing she saw as he closed in on her station. She kept her head down, the light of the computer making her face pale, two small screens reflected in her pale blue eyes. He wondered if she had genuinely not heard him, she was so lost in her work.

"Peace offering," he said, leaning in to kiss her cheek.

For a second, he thought she was going to be stubborn and persist in her sulk. But she looked up at him in surprise, then a smile lit up her face.

"I knew I still loved you for a reason," she replied, taking the pastry gratefully.

She shuffled aside, letting him take the seat vacated by Lucas just an hour before. Later, he would be taking her home at six, and the paperwork be damned.

"Any luck with our mutual friend?" he asked, returning to the here and now.

"Little," she replied, reaching for the Danish.

"Ros has some interesting intel on diamond mining in the exact same region," he said. "You'll need to look into that, too. Maybe I'm being overly suspicious, but I dislike how all this is coinciding."

He kept trying to tell himself he was being paranoid. But, in his experience, there was no such thing as a coincidence. He wanted every avenue checked for signs of the fake Lucas North, and his murder of Vaughan Edwards has collided with a rise in illegal diamond mining in the same area. There was absolutely nothing of substance to link the two, but none of it sat right with him. In the meantime, however, they had to sit back and wait. The least he could do was make the wait as productive as possible.

"There's all sorts going on in that region, Harry," she said, striking a note of caution. "But we'll keep an open mind."

Before then, he wanted a proper lunch. He hadn't come all that way just to talk diamond mining and ghosts from the past. He Ruth by the hands and gently pulled her out her chair. "Leave it for now," he suggested. "We need to eat." With that, they left the Grid together, reconciled once more.

* * *

**Sorry for the delay in getting this updated, it's been a busy week. But thanks for reading and reviews would be appreciated.**


	3. Hindsight

**Thank you to everyone who has read and reviewed this story, your feedback is appreciated a lot. Thanks. **

* * *

**Chapter Three: Hindsight**

Balancing a loaded cardboard box in his arms, Lucas kicked his car door shut and thanked the old gods and the new for automatic locking. Car keys clenched between his teeth, he dodged a young cyclist circling the pavement and cautiously made his way up Ros' front path, using memory alone to judge where the steps to her front door were. One of the books in the open box jutted painfully into the underside of his chin; even more so when his toe scuffed the second step and he was sent crashing forwards. Cursing heavily as his knee impacted painfully with the concrete lip of the third step, he dropped the box sending Ros' stuff scattering and cascading down the one step he'd managed to mount.

"Shit!" he cursed, causing the car keys in between his teeth to join the party.

The sound of stifled laughter came from behind him. Lucas whipped round to see the kid on the bike openly staring at him, grinning like an idiot at his misfortune. Mercifully, the youth's hands were engaged with the handlebars of the bike, or no doubt his phone would have been out and Lucas' inglorious tumble would have been all over YouTube. Before the finest choice of expletives could form on Lucas' lips, the youth hit the peddles and vanished round the corner at high speed.

"Wanker," muttered Lucas, furiously.

Sighing heavily, he began gathering up Ros' bits and pieces from the ground. Old shirts, books and CDs mainly. But phones, items of jewellery (some of which he had bought for her) and also a bottle of perfume, which now lay smashed on the concrete path in a nice demonstration of their relationship status. He tried to pick up one jagged shard, and promptly cut his finger. To reinforce the point, some of the residual perfume went straight into the open wound and caused a bitch of a sting that made his eyes water.

"What's your next trick?"

Ros' voice was a soft, unmistakable drawl. Lucas looked up, seeing her standing in the door way dressed casually for the evening and looking down her long nose at him. Being found on his hands and knees among her scattered belongings brought a flush of colour to his cheeks. Nevertheless, he averted his gaze and carried on gathering everything up again.

"I thought you might want these things back," he said, explaining his presence on her doorstep.

After two years together, they'd each built up a collection of the other's belongings in their respective homes. Before the Vaughan Edwards affair, they were looking for a place to move in together. But now all that was over, and it was time to completely disentangle themselves from their lives and start afresh. Just as Lucas retrieved a silk nightdress that had been blow on a gust of wind to a nearby gatepost, Ros padded barefoot down the steps to help him.

"There's broken glass," he warned her.

Regardless, she knelt down and helped lift the books and CDs back into the box. Both kneeling on the cold path, they worked silently until she reached out and touched his arm.

"You're the one who's bleeding," she pointed out.

Briefly, he glanced up at her and shrugged.

"I'll live."

Once the last item, a bracelet he bought her on her birthday, was piled into the box they fell still and silent. Unable to think what to do next, Lucas averted his gaze while his thoughts raced. Should he leave immediately? No, he decided he should at least offer to carry the box inside for her, it was heavy. He went to lift it, but collided with Ros who went to do the same thing at the same time. They both let out an awkward laugh as they reached a tacit compromise and carried the load between them.

"Thanks," he said, careful to match his pace to hers before any more accidents could happen. "Where d'you want it?"

"Oh, just dump it at the bottom of the stairs. I'll sort it all out later," replied Ros.

When they let the box down, Lucas felt as though his arms had been stretched with lead weights and his cut fingers stung sharply. With Ros' bits and pieces finally delivered, they stood and looked at one another across the small hallway. She had moved to the kitchen door, where she stood with one hand poised on the door handle, her expression oddly sorrowful. He couldn't think why he found it strange; after all, it was the end for both of them and neither of them chose it.

"Stay for a glass of wine," said Ros, waving a hand towards the breakfast bar.

"Oh, I'm driving," Lucas replied, "But a-"

"Cup of tea, then?"

Lucas raised a smile and stepped into the kitchen. As ever, it was immaculately clean, with pristine Formica topped counters and shining British steel utensils lined up neatly on wall mounted racks. Not a stray crumb marred the perfection and it made Lucas nervous as he ruined the symmetry by pulling up one of the chairs to sit at the breakfast bar. No more than two minutes later, Ros was sitting opposite him with a first aid box and handing him a mug of steaming tea. He accepted gratefully and even let her dab at his bashed elbow with a damp cloth. Her glass of wine temporarily ignored.

"Ouch!" he hissed, pulling his arm away from the sting of suspected TCP.

"Don't be such a baby!" she chided, with a playful grin.

"It smells of cat piss," he whined, but still raised his arm to make her job a little easier.

"Better than the stench of putrefying flesh," she reasoned, clamping the cloth over the open cut before turning her attention to his fingers. "So, what do you make of our diamond smugglers?" she asked.

For a moment, Lucas watched as Ros tended the open cut on his fingers, the way she dabbed at it with cotton wool steeped in anti-sceptic. The acrid smell of the TCP cutting through the steam of his tea, hit the back of his throat and made him want to gag.

"I just don't know," he finally replied. The answer was almost embarrassing, especially for his first Op back on the job. "We've got to go back to the source and find out who's in control of that mine. We know D'Veres are not directly sponsoring anything dubious, they're just fleecing the third world. Any terrorists or undesirables who profit from that are merely the by-product of their exploitation and that's what worries me more."

"That doesn't mean they should be allowed to get away with ripping off the world's poorest people!" Ros retorted, carefully wrapping a band aid round his cuts.

"No, I know," Lucas quickly corrected himself. "And if there is anything like that going on, we can compel the Sierra Leoneans to shut the mine down and employ the workers on one of their official mines – D'Vere's will have no choice but pay more for legally sourced gems, then. Isn't there anyone at Six who can help us?"

"I'm sure there is," she replied. "I can make a few calls in the morning, while you and Beth are buying your engagement ring." She made a face, as though Lucas and Beth's quick, undercover jaunt to D'Vere's left a foul taste in her mouth. It had to be done, though. Lucas needed to see their paperwork and Beth wanted to see their Asset.

Setting her glass down, Ros looked back at him thoughtfully. He could tell, by the look on her face, that she was choosing her next words carefully and he found himself trying to pre-empt whatever it was that was on her mind. He wasn't used to Ros, of all people, mincing her words.

"Whatever's happening, I need you focused on this Op," she said. "If this business with whatever-his-name-is-these-days begins to affect you-"

"Ros, it won't," he snapped back at her. The presumption that he would fall apart again was heavy in her undertone and it rankled. He knew, after last time, that he had no right to be rankled, but he was anyway. He took a measured breath to steady himself, before adding: "I have learned, you know."

Ros didn't as much as flinch at his little outburst. Her expression remained completely unreadable, to the point where he wondered whether she'd taken lessons on inscrutability from Loopy Lydia. After what seemed an inordinately long silence, Ros merely blinked. "Tell me something honestly, Lucas. Would you ever have told me about him – about you?"

Unprepared for the question, Lucas found himself caught out for a suitably couched answer.

"I cannot imagine any other circumstances under which the truth-"

"Stop pussy footing around and tell me the truth," she interjected, her brow wrinkling into a deep scowl.

"No," he bluntly stated. "But by the time I met you, I was Lucas North. Even now, I think I still am."

Lucas had expected the force of truth to disgust her. But, if anything, she looked gratified by his answer. The corners of her mouth curled into a pale smile as she drained the last of her wine.

"At least you're being honest with me now," she said, peering into her empty glass.

He wanted to tell her that he'd never lie to her again, but he knew he needed to prove it. Words were cheap; promises were cheaper still. Instead, he merely thanked her for the tea and let her show him to the door.

* * *

The chicken casserole was almost ready and a bottle of red was breathing on the new dining room table. The cutlery was set and the candles in the center of the table were lit already. Harry dimmed the lamps, letting the room take on the warmth of the candlelight. Upstairs, he could just heard the sound of the shower being shut off, meaning Ruth would be ready soon. He drew the curtains closed and returned to the kitchen to make sure their dinner wasn't burning. He wanted it on the table by the time she came down.

It wasn't his night of drunken debauchery with Lucas North that still nagged at him. Simply because a few too many down the George didn't rank as a night of drunken debauchery in anyone's books, never mind his. But more that it was their first night proper in their new house as man and wife. After the madness of the honeymoon, followed quickly by the mad rush to catch up with the work they'd missed, they'd been living out of their suitcase while the unpacking slipped by the wayside. That, and Harry wanted to get in early before Ruth's anxiety over Catherine's impending visit completely took over. This would be the last night they got to share together before other stuff started creeping in.

"Something smells delicious."

Harry whirled round from the kitchen counter, to where Ruth paused in the doorway wrapped in a bathrobe. She was smiling brightly, relaxed from a hot shower and free from the worries of real life. He thought she looked magnificent, even with the uncombed, towel dried hair giving her the appearance of one dragged backwards through a hedge. Setting aside the serving spoon, Harry closed the gap between them and wrapped his arms around her waist.

"Five more minutes," he said, nuzzling her damp hair. He wanted to run his fingers through it, but was worried in case he accidentally scalped her in the process. She kissed him back, before darting back up the stairs.

While she finished getting ready, Harry served up their dinner and poured them each a generous glass of wine, so that it was all waiting when she duly returned, five minutes later.

"Now that looks amazing," she remarked, digging straight in to the potatoes and casserole.

Harry fully concurred and picked up his fork, just as his mobile phone trilled into life. Both he and Ruth froze, like someone had pressed a pause button on them, while the phone continued to ring. Internally, Harry's temper flared and he cursed under his breath as he lifted it out of his shirt pocket. As he dreaded, it was work.

"Eat," he said to Ruth. "I'll only be a minute."

"Harry ignore it," she implored him. "Surely it can wait?"

It was too late, and he had already answered. He pushed back his chair and took the call out in the kitchen. As he disappeared through the door, he looked back at Ruth and nodded towards her plate, signalling for her to carry on without him.

"This had better be bloody important," he griped at the unfortunate messenger.

"Harry, its Beth Bailey. I'm still on The Grid-"

"So I gather, Beth. If the coffee machine's broken, I'm really not-"

"Maya Lahan's dead, Harry," she impatiently cut over him.

In that instant, Harry's irritation turned to numb disbelief. Before carrying on, he closed the living room door so Ruth couldn't overhear and moved deeper into the kitchen. First Vaughan Edwards and now, Maya Lahan. He tried to reason with himself that he didn't yet have all the facts, but it rang hollow, even in his imagination.

"Okay, Beth, tell me what you know."

On the other end of the line, Beth drew a deep breath. "After all that business with Our Lucas and Vaughan Edwards, Maya Lahan left the country and set up practise in Paris, using a legend. Assuming she would be safe with both Edwards and Fake North behind bars and Our Lucas firmly back on side, there was very little security around her. She only had CCTV, which is still in the hands of the French. But she was found dead at home this afternoon, single bullet wound straight through the heart."

Harry's stomach lurched unpleasantly as Beth spelled out the details of another murder striking much too close to home. It took him a minute to even marshal his thoughts on the matter, his mind spinning with the shock. He dreaded, first and foremost, just how badly Lucas would react to the news. It was the thought of him that finally jolted Harry back into his professional senses.

"Beth, not a word to anyone about Doctor Lahan's death; I will inform Ros Myers in the morning and together we will tell Lucas," he explained, emphasising the need for complete discretion until Lucas, at least, had been informed. "In the meantime, if you don't mind working a little later, can you contact the French authorities and ask if we can have access to that CCTV footage?"

"Sure thing, Harry," Beth replied. "Her family need to be informed, though. They have a right to know, above and beyond Lucas."

"Oh, of course," he agreed, vaguely regretful that he'd scarcely spared the young Doctor's parents and siblings a thought. "Send a family liaison officer round to them; they're trained for this. You concentrate on getting that footage. I want to know who it was. Have the French media covered this?"

"No. Their Security Agency ran a search for her and it flagged up her MI5 file. That's why they contacted us," she answered, and Harry breathed a silent sigh of relief. One thing, at least, was going their way. "They're holding off until they hear from you."

"Great work, Beth," he answered. "The French probably won't give us any trouble, but if they do I'm afraid it'll have to wait until morning. There's little I can do now and as soon as you're done, go home and get some rest."

With that, the call ended. Although his appetite had been significantly reduced, he returned to Ruth and his dinner, if only to knock back a glass of that vintage merlot on the table. Ruth looked up at him expectantly as he returned, her expression doubly endearing with a smudge of gravy on her chin and it was all he could do not to lick his thumb and wipe it away. He sat back down heavily and reached for his glass, pushing his plate aside as he went for it. Recognising the look in his eyes, Ruth's expression had turned serious.

"I know its bad news," she said, dabbing at her mouth with the napkin. She, too, was preparing to abandon dinner by the looks of it.

"Maya Lahan has been murdered," he said, realising there was no point hiding the truth.

A fleeting look of confusion crossed Ruth's face, while she recalled the face and name.

"Our Lucas' ex?" she asked, seeking clarity. "Oh god, Harry, that's awful. What happened?"

He relayed the conversation he had just had with Beth Bailey. When Maya had left England, they had not been tracking her too closely. The threat to her was personal and completely eradicated once Vaughan Edwards had been extradited to Senegal. Even recommending that she go abroad had been a precautionary measure to get their Lucas off her back, more than anything else. With regret, Harry began to suspect she might have been safer if she had remained in the UK after all. At the opposite side of the table, Ruth had retrieved her fork and began picking at her food again. The look on her face was thoughtful, as she processed what had happened.

"If even we didn't know where she was living, how could anyone else have known?" she asked, at length. "By anyone else, I mean anyone connected with the case."

"That's what we need to work out," he replied, wearily. "The fact is that both Vaughan Edwards and Maya Lahan are both personally linked to our Lucas. The only other person in that equation is … what's his real name again?"

"Lewis Norwood," replied Ruth. "But he won't be using that name anymore. His last known legend was Dylan Hughes."

Harry rubbed at his tired eyes and sighed deeply. "Ever get the feeling that he would have fit right in at MI5?" he asked, drily. "Slipping from one identity to the next like that, I'd be highly surprised if he even knows who he is anymore."

"Is there any suggestion he will come after Lucas next?" she asked, taking a sip of wine.

"It's logical," he answered. "But, before we get ahead of ourselves, let's just confirm exactly what's been happening and why. For all we know, this could all be one massive coincidence-"

He was cut off by Ruth choking on her wine, a disastrous result of trying to stop herself from bursting out laughing with a mouthful of wine. She was red in the face by the time she had recovered her composure.

"Come on, Harry, we both know this every bit as suspect as it looks," she replied. "I'm still waiting for the Senegalese authorities to confirm whether Norwood has even been released yet. Anyone would think they're avoiding us with the length of time it's taking them."

"In the meantime, I want Lucas involved only in the diamond Op," added Harry. "I do not want him getting mixed up in this business yet again. The first time nearly destroyed him, a second time will tip him over the edge – that's the only thing I'm bloody well certain about."

Six months ago, when Lucas' behaviour started to show signs of becoming mightily peculiar, Harry could never have guessed where it would lead. Or to how close to the edge it would bring his most experienced Senior Case Officer. For a man to survive eight years of torture and isolation in a prison cell behind enemy lines, only to be brought down by a conman was beyond absurd, it was tragedy. Harry found himself sinking back into his memories, drawing parallels with that time and this. It had not occurred to him before and the sudden realisation made the blood in his veins chill. Gooseflesh prickled the length of his arms as he tried to warm himself up again with another glass of wine.

Resting his elbows on the table, he looked over at Ruth, who also seemed to have lost interest in her meal. But, unlike him, she had at least got to enjoy most of it. Their gaze met while she reached for the wine to top up her own glass. He wanted to tell her about Russia, about how the enemy had caught Lucas. How he was lured into a trap and how this, the events of the last few days, had the exact same feeling about it. But then, he supposed, they had both had their share of unpleasant shocks for one evening.


	4. Assassin

Thank you to everyone who has read and reviewed this story, it means a lot. Thank you.

* * *

**Chapter Four: Assassins **

As soon as D'Veres jewellers came in to view, Lucas threw an arm around Beth's shoulder, drawing her in tight as they walked down the street. She glanced up at him, smiling from ear to ear while they paused by the window display, looking at all the diamond rings, earrings and necklaces on show. The lighting was soft, just enough to make each gem glitter to its best advantage. The coloured gems, placed in the middle to draw the eye, splintered the light, catching the colour of the exquisitely polished stones. Some were as big and gaudy as Christmas baubles; others as tiny as a spark of light. But none were as big and loud as their astronomical price. An entire Hospital's worth of Nurses would all have to re-mortgage their homes to buy just one of them. Every so often, Beth would gasp with feigned delight and point to one or another.

"Look at that!" she would gush. "Isn't it tacky as fuck?"

Lucas choked back a snort of laughter. "We're supposed to be choosing an engagement ring, remember?"

He disentangled himself from Beth, taking a moment to straighten his tie, adjusting the concealed wire in its lining. Once satisfied they had spent long enough browsing the front of shop displays, he opened the door and gestured Beth in first, making a show of kissing the top of her head as she passed him. He joined her by one of the interior display cases, wrapping his arms around her middle and giving a squeeze for show. Each item was lit up small halogen spot lights fixed into the roof of the case, but they all looked the same to Lucas. Sparkly, ostentatious and expensive.

Naturally, it didn't really matter which one Beth chose, they just needed to catch the sales rep's eye. The wide, spacious interior was made more effective by a distinct lack of customers, making their job that little bit easier. Within minutes, a sharply dressed twenty-something swooped down on them from where she was positioned behind one of the cash registers. She beamed at them, revealing a row perfectly straight teeth that bore the dazzling hallmark of Dentist's bleach, like she was in competition with the gems she worked with.

"Something for the lady, Sir?" she asked, looking past Beth and straight to Lucas.

"We're looking for an engagement ring, actually," Beth replied, cutting Lucas off.

The sales rep turned to Beth as though she'd only just noticed she was there.

"Well congratulations," she exclaimed with a practised, oddly controlled pleasantness. "As you can see, we have a broad selection of engagement rings, ranging in price from-"

"I like this one," said Beth, jabbing a nail at the glass display case.

Lucas was bored already. Real shopping trips were one thing; pretend ones quite another but just as soul crushingly dull. However, he had a pretence to keep up and tried for the sake of the Op to remain with it. Occasionally, he smiled, wrapped a protective arm around Beth's shoulders while the sales rep pushed the more expensive items under their noses. Finally, they directed her towards just one. Pink and white diamond cluster set in eighteen carat white gold, costing damn near two thousand pounds. Within minutes, they were following the rep into a back room, while another, bizarrely identical girl, and took over front of house.

They were shown into a small room, most of the space taken up by a desk with a flat screen monitor PC pushed into a top left corner. Large black ledgers were stacked on shelves behind the desk, causing Lucas to inwardly groan. The information they sought was more than likely in those ledgers, rather than on the computer. A CCTV camera was situated in the ceiling, but the tell-tale red light was already off. Tariq had hacked it and killed it already.

"There's just some paperwork, insurance details and what have you, to get through first," the girl explained, seating herself behind the desk and firing up the computer.

At that moment, Beth made her move.

"Sorry, before we go any further," she said. "Are you guys Kimberly Certified? Can I see your papers?"

The girl looked taken aback for a moment, as though it was taking her a moment to remember what the Kimberly Process even is. But the smile returned a split second later. "Yes, we're signed up to-"

"I would need to see your papers," Beth insisted.

Lucas let the silence spiral for a moment before delivering his own nudge.

"All signatories to the Kimberly Agreement are required to keep certification on the premises," he pointed out. "Unless it's too much trouble. We can go elsewhere."

"I would hate for our big day to come at the expense of third world diamond miners-"

"No! No, of course it's not too trouble," the sales rep cut off Beth's final impassioned comment, but glanced nervously round the room. Ros' Asset could only be correct in his assertion that few customers ever bothered to find out whether the company was sourcing ethical diamonds. "The only thing is, the papers are in my manager's office upstairs. Do you mind waiting?"

"Not at all," replied Beth. Both she and Lucas assured her with a smile.

"Take your time," Lucas added.

They both held their breath while the girl left the room, listening together as their footsteps receded down the passage way outside.

"Quick, Beth, do it now."

Lucas fitted a phone tap while Beth copied the hard drive on the computer. While the files were being duplicated, Beth also started rifling through the most recent ledger. Lucas tried to look over her shoulder, but the writing was too scrawled to see properly. Once the phone bug was in place, he got up on the girl's chair to take down the make, model and serial number of the CCTV camera – useful for hacking them and recording images remotely.

"Anything interesting?" he asked, glancing down at Beth.

She had her camera out and was taking snap shots of the pages without reading them. "Dunno," she replied.

"Just take one of the others," he said. "They won't notice it missing for ages and we can give it to the Asset to replace."

Without further prompting, Beth took one of the older ledgers from the shelf and stuffed it into her handbag. She was just fastening it up again when the footsteps of the Sales Rep sounded from outside. Beth and Lucas glanced at one another for a second before swooping down on their seats, careful to be sat back where they were before she left and in roughly the same pose. The door opened just as Lucas was straightening his tie again, the girl beamed at them while waving a few papers.

"Here you go," she said, arranging the papers neatly in front of them. "We signed up to the Kimberly Process back in 1999 and our certificates have been renewed annually ever since then. All our diamonds are sourced from conflict free zones including Angola and Liberia. Ever since the company learned of human rights abuses taking place in certain other areas, we shut down our mines there and we no longer purchase stones from the open market. As you can see," she explained, gesturing towards the document in front of Beth. "We own all our own mines and we know exactly who sourced them and from where."

"That sounds brilliant," Beth enthused, looking over the paperwork.

"Yeah," Lucas agreed. "Both Sarah and I need to be absolutely certain our wedding is completely ethically sound."

Having already obtained a company statement straight from the horse's mouth, Lucas decided not to press the issue any further lest the rep should become suspicious. All they needed to do for the remainder of the purchase was act the role of loving soon-to-be-weds.

* * *

Ros clicked through the images attached to the email with a look of disgust marking her features. She saw what she needed to confirm Beth's report that Doctor Lahan was truly dead; an image showing her body collapsed in the doorway to her place of work. Other images showed the pock-marked wall and shot through windows, shots that had missed. Whoever was responsible took the woman down in a hail of bullets, just two of which hit their target: one in the stomach and another in the head. Some small mercy coming in the fact that she would have been dead before she hit the ground. Just a thin trickle of blood ran into the nearby gutters. Needing a break, Ros closed down the photo viewer and stared blankly at the computer's desktop for a minute. She took a deep breath and sat back, processing slowly the details of what she had seen. The first thing that struck her: it wasn't a professional. If it was a professional, they were seriously out of practice to miss that many times. She had counted eight individual bullets, including the two that struck Maya.

After her short break, she looked at the CCTV stills again. One showed a car slowing down, its break lights blurring red in the Parisian smog, just as Doctor Lahan was lowering the shutters on her business for the night. She zoomed in on the number plate, but it was too blurry to see properly. She took a screen shot of the enlarged plate, attached it to an email and forwarded it to Tariq, requesting a clean-up without stating why. Lucas had yet to be informed of his former fiancée's death and she didn't want the whole of the Grid to know before him; it was bad enough that Beth Bailey had been the first to learn of it.

Printing out a few more images of interesting, various shots of passers-by and vehicles in the locale, before heading towards Harry's office with them. On the way there, Jo Portman stepped through the pods with a stranger in tow. He was an Asian man, young: no more than early twenties. His face looked familiar, but she couldn't quite place him. With the memory too hazy to act upon, she kept her attention on Jo.

"Keep an eye out for Lucas will you, Jo," she said. "As soon as he gets here, send him straight in to Harry. Without delay."

"Sure," Jo nodded. "Oh, Ros, you remember Mahdi, don't you?"

She was about to depart for the Office, but stopped as the memory dropped suddenly into her mind. Mahdi was just eighteen, had infiltrated a cell of Muslim extremists in his local Mosque and acted on his own raw initiate to save both Lucas' life and hers. She gave him the number of their recruitment people, but never expected to hear from him again.

"Of course!" she replied, turning back to face the newcomer. "The English Defence League Op three years ago. Are you joining Section D?"

Mahdi looked flushed with pride. "Yes, Ma'am," he replied, grinning. "You recruited me, along with that other fella."

"Lucas," she reminded him. In those terms, a lot had changed since those heady days. "Well, Jo will show you the ropes and if you need help, I'm Section Chief and usually around somewhere. Good to see you again."

She made her apologies for having to rush off and ducked into Harry's office, where Ruth was already seated at his side. The flicker of irritation must have shown on her face, because Ruth was soon gathering her belongings and making for the door, with Harry gazing after her as she went, closing the door firmly behind her. Once they were sealed in and Harry had closed the blinds, Ros laid out the stills she had printed on his desk. When he returned to his seat, he glanced over them with a familiar look of detachment in his eyes. She narrated his way through the pictures with her early observations.

"Definitely not a professional," he concurred. "A resident of the flat up stairs even heard the gunshots, so they didn't even use a silencer. First day on the job, maybe?"

It was a possibility. "Either way, Tariq's working on cleaning up an image of the number plate. Even if the plates are false, we can still use them to track down the vehicle. Even if it's burned out, we can still check for evidence. It's a long shot, but still worth the effort."

"Even if the plates were swapped, it was probably with the other vehicle. It's a matter of tracking through the records," Harry added, thoughtful. "Let's just hope the vehicles were bought in France itself."

However, all that would have to wait. Ros' reply was cut off with a soft knock on the door, quickly followed by Lucas peering round a narrow aperture. Harry, looking gratified that the Senior Case Officer at least remembered to knock, waved him in and gestured towards Ros' seat. She claimed Ruth's recently vacated seat at Harry's side. The pair of them watched as Lucas got settled, his gaze was suddenly tense and nervy as his eye line darted back and forth between them.

"Wh-what is this?" he asked, suppressing a slight stammer. "Have I done something wrong?"

"No, Lucas, it's nothing you've done," Harry was quick to reassure him. From there, he gave way to the tender, feminine sensitivities of Ros.

"Doctor Maya Lahan was found dead late last night-"

"What?" Lucas cut over her, eyes widening in shock. "What happened?"

"She was shot dead at six pm yesterday evening," Ros answered, keeping her tone calm and measured. "She-"

"Who was meant to be looking out for her?" he cut over Ros again, a flush of anger creeping into his face. "I thought we were looking after her."

With Lucas' distress levels rising, Ros knew she had to tread carefully. She chose her next words carefully.

"Because of what happened here prior to her relocation, it was decided that it would be best if only sparse records were kept here," she explained to an increasingly angry Lucas. "Her security arrangements were known only to the French-"

"Because you thought I might get hold of them and track her down again?" he was incredulous. "Who took this decision?"

Ros drew a deep breath. "Lucas, you know I cannot disclose that-"

"I did," Harry said, flatly. "And I would do it again."

Sometimes, Harry's forthright attitude surpassed her own and left her in the dust. Anticipating an explosion, she closed her eyes and mentally counted to three. But all that happened was a thickening of the already tense silence. When she looked back at Lucas he looked hurt, angry and betrayed.

"You had no right…" he stammered again, now out of anger and got to his feet. "You just… you had no right to judge me-"

Ros rolled her eyes as her fragile temper snapped.

"We had every right," she retorted, using the royal 'we' to emphasise the fact that she stood shoulder to shoulder with Harry. "After the years of lies and deceit you fed us, damn bloody sure we had the right so don't you dare sit there pontificating about us sitting in judgement on you."

Her rebuke looked as though it had come as a slap in the face. He looked stunned, his eyes shining with suppressed tears. Sometimes, it's as though he forgets they know the truth about them, and he still thinks he commands the same respect and trust. But he needs to know he must earn it back. She glanced over at Harry, to see how he was reacting to Lucas' emotional outburst. But, as ever, his expression was utterly unreadable. He was sat resting his chin in his hands, looking back at Lucas like a patient parent waiting for the teenage tantrum to pass. Eventually, however, he felt able to speak.

"Lucas, we're both truly sorry for your loss and we understand-"

"You understand nothing!" Lucas shot back in a low voice. "Spare me the sanctimonious self-justifications for your criminal negligence-"

"Stop, Lucas," Ros commanded, fixing him with an uncompromisingly hard glare. "Do not think for one moment that the history between us will stay my hand when taking disciplinary action against you. Calm down, right now."

For a moment, the silence between them was lethal. Filled only by Lucas' ragged breathing as he formulated some equally stinging retort, that cut right over Harry's interjection.

"No," replied Lucas, growing more audible. "Nor for one moment do I fool myself into thinking you won't roll out our shared history to arbitrarily punish me according to your own personal caprices-"

"ENOUGH!" Harry slammed his fist down on the table, making both Lucas and Ros flinch and recoil. He glowered at the pair of them, equally, in turn. "I. Said. Enough. The pair of you." Harry paused, making certain he was holding the attention of both of them. Noting their satisfactorily agog stares, he continued down the more diplomatic route. "You are sailing much too close to the wind, Lucas-"

"You're on her side!" Lucas shot back, eliciting a groan from Ros.

During the long silence, Ros glanced sideways at Harry, wondering what suicidal urge in Lucas had prompted him to interrupt their mercurial boss for the fourth time. The grief card was only going to get him so far and, evidently, it had already been expended. Now Harry was looking only at him, his green eyes darkening with barely suppressed fury.

"I have laid my reputation and career on the line for you," he explained, his tone dangerously low, just hiding the simmering anger. To emphasise his point, he jabbed an accusatory finger in the direction of Lucas' chest. "After the manner in which you entered our service-"

"I didn't ask you to do that-"

"You did, actually," Ros pointed out, matter of factly.

Harry ploughed on, before Lucas could be drawn back into a row with Ros. "You have had five, maybe six chances to calm down. For now, all your involvement in operations is suspended pending further disciplinary action-"

"Harry, no," Lucas' anger turned on a trice to desperation.

Harry, however, merely continued as though there had been no interruption. "You will be confined to desk duties until that date, of which you will be notified by Human Resources. You are dismissed for the remainder of the day. Good day to you."

Lucas' shoulders slumped in defeat as he looked from Harry to Ros. However, Harry was already filling in the necessary form and Ros was pretending to read it to avoid having to look at Lucas. When he got no reaction from either of them, he got to his feet and slammed the door shut on his way out. Once they were alone again, Harry dropped the pen and leaned back in his seat with a deep sigh.

"That went well," he said, burying his face in his hands.

Ros shrugged. "Could've been worse."

Wearily, Harry got to his feet and procured a bottle of whiskey and two glasses. The nice crystal ones he normally used for the Home Sec and the DG. They both deserved it after that.

* * *

She found him on the roof of Thames House. He had his back to her, looking out over London. The air was clean and crisp that high up. The sounds of the traffic distant below them. It was where the agents came to clear their heads and talk free from the threat of listening devices. He was motionless, wrapped in his jacket and ready to go. Only, Ruth looked up and saw Lucas head for the roof space instead of the pods, still raging with fury over what had happened. For the moment, she held off approaching him; lost as he was in his own thoughts. But after a moment, Lucas sensed her presence and glanced over his shoulder to see her.

She was momentarily taken aback by the expression on his face. Pained and drawn, it was like being catapulted back to before Christmas, when he was being blackmailed by Vaughan Edwards. But when their gaze met, he raised a pained smile instead of running away.

"I guess you knew," he said, calm again now. His hair was moussed up in the soft breeze that always swept the rooftops of London.

She shook her head. "Only because Harry and I had sat down to dinner when he got the call."

Despite the fact that he'd been improving steadily since the winter, she was still immensely relieved when he stood back from the railings at the lip of the building. He closed the gap between them, where she then led him to a makeshift seat that was actually planks of wood wedged between two old chimney stacks. They sat side by side, looking out over the sea of roofs and chimneys, punctuated by an array of towers, the Gherkin glittering amongst them, St Paul's in the far distance, on the other side of the river.

"I am sorry for your loss Lucas," she said, turning to look up at him. "I know Doctor Lahan meant a lot to you."

The fact was, he was willing to throw his whole life away for her sake. Well, that and covering his own tracks, but Ruth guessed now wasn't time to bring up the grey areas. But the only expression in his eyes now was sadness. Sadness at the loss of an old girlfriend, for an old flame so decisively snuffed out. The last hope gone.

"Thank you, Ruth," he said, tonelessly. "I guess you heard…"

His words trailed off, not that he needed to say anymore. Although Harry's office was as good as sound proof, the row was still audible. Pretty much everyone on the Grid picked up on it. She tried to tell Harry that bringing Ros in to break the news would be incendiary. But, it was correct procedure. Since when had Harry cared about procedure?

"I never mean what I said," he murmured. "I was just… you know."

She rested one hand on his forearm. "I'll talk to Harry, Lucas," she said. "But do as he says. Take the rest of the day off, try to get some sleep and give yourself time. Come in tomorrow and apologise."

She didn't seriously expect him to look pleased about it, but there was no change in his manner at all. However, she managed to coax him down and into her car for a lift home. Whatever was happening, no matter what, she still had the sickening feeling that Lucas was next on the assassin's list.

* * *

**Thank you for reading and apologies for the slight delay. Reviews would be appreciated, thank you.**


	5. Dead Men

Thank you to everyone who has read and reviewed this story, it means a lot.

* * *

**Chapter Five: Dead Men**

The chill of the bed sheets brought Harry out in gooseflesh as he slipped in next to Ruth. He wrapped his arms around her waist, squeezing her close to steal the warmth of her body, eliciting from his wife a sharp gasp. "You're freezing!" He responded with a satisfied sigh and a tighter squeeze before she could scoot away. It was all coming at the end of a long and fraught day, with the Maya Lahan case and the cans of worms it had busted open; the row between Ros and Lucas, with the latter disgraced and deskbound for the foreseeable future. Harry needed to switch off and lie in the glutinous darkness, breathing in her scent of orange blossom shower gel and warm vanilla body spray. Sensing Ruth slipping off to sleep he closed his own eyes, gratefully following suit.

Minutes later, however, Ruth rolled over and rest one hand on his hip, snaking it around his waist. Even after a month, it still thrilled him. Someone else's hair on his pillow; someone else's body heat in the middle of a chilly night in May. Sometimes, he woke up in the morning and forgot that they were married; then he caught a rush of excitement moments later when he remembered. At that moment, he could feel her drawing closer to him, could taste the residual toothpaste on her lips as they met his in a kiss. Despite his exhaustion, he gladly shook himself down to wake up again.

"Harry," she breathed his name in barely a whisper.

"Ruth," he replied, entwining himself in her embrace.

Shuffling over so that her face rested against the same pillow as him, he could hear her draw a deep, shuddering breath. "Why were you so hard on Lucas today?" she asked.

Abruptly, Harry turned on his back and sighed heavily at the ceiling too dark to see. Beside him, Ruth propped herself up on her elbow and looked down at him. He could feel her gaze boring through him.

"The thing is, Harry, if you don't mind the dual identity issue, he's given years of service and sacrificed a lot…"

The rest of her talk washed over him as the irritation in him began to simmer. Why bring it up at that moment? They've had all evening, and he caught the scent of deliberate pillow talk to soften him up.

"You were not in that meeting, Ruth," he replied, careful to keep his tone even. "The way he spoke to Ros-"

"Ros can be very … inflammatory in these situations," she interjected. "I did warn you about that before the meeting."

"Well, she wasn't in this instance," Harry insisted. "Yes, she was straightforward and to the point. But she wasn't insensitive."

When Ruth made no immediate reply, Harry dared to hope that he'd won the argument before it had properly begun. However, it seemed he'd only won the first round.

"Ros has an agenda of her own in taking action against Lucas," she said. "Can her judgement be entirely trusted-"

"Maybe not, but mine can," he snapped back. "Unless you think I have an agenda, too."

"No, but you have always sided with Ros-"

"Because she is my Section Chief, I would trust her with my life."

Hoping that would be an end to it, he closed his eyes and tried again to drift off to sleep. But now her very silence was agitating him. A silenced so heavy it was more of a stand-off than anything else. The weight of expectation was on him to say something or make some sort of concession.

"I support Ros' decision because I think it would be beneficial to both Lucas and the team's morale if he was given a chance to earn back everyone's trust," he said, unaccustomed to justifying himself.

"So you admit this happening for personal reasons, rather than anything he's actually done?"

Harry was about to repeat what he'd already said, but changed his mind. Instead, he changed tack.

"Ruth," he said, evenly. "Have you never wondered why people take advantage of you?"

"What?" came her icy reply.

Without clarifying, he pressed on: "You forgive too easily; you overlook fatal faults in others too easily and, most of all, you trust far too easily. Lucas told you he was sorry and promised to be a good boy in future and now everything's just plain tickety-boo in your world. In the real world, Ruth, it's not okay. Lucas is in the shit and it's up to him to get himself out of it, but he is much too personally involved in the Maya Lahan/Vaughan Edwards Op."

Ruth had already pulled back the covers and got to her feet by the time he stopped talking. She grabbed her dressing gown from the back of a chair and pointed at him with it hanging limp from her wrist. He could just see her silhouette as she opened the door and let in the light from the landing outside. "It's not that I trust too easily, Harry, but that I believe in giving people second chances," she retorted, her voice growing shrill. "Ros has everyone's support in this; not a soul is fighting Lucas' corner and I don't like that, Harry."

"Ruth!" Harry groaned. "Come back into-"

The door slamming closed cut off the last word. He sighed again, just as Ruth's footsteps receded down the outside hallway. As he drifted off to sleep, he decided to give it twenty minutes before going after her. If only he wasn't so exhausted.

* * *

Lucas paused before passing through the pods and on to the Grid. Having timed his departure from home to the second, he'd arrived at nine am sharp so to avoid having to talk to anyone before work officially, and to avoid angering anyone further by being late. However, he dropped his head as he finally passed through the pods and onto the grid itself. Ros' desk was empty, he was relieved to see, and his place was clear. Only Ruth, looking pale and tired, caught his eye as he took his seat. She raised a pained smile, but quickly turned back to her own tasks.

Meanwhile, he switched on his computer to check whatever mean crumbs of work had been tossed in his direction. When he accessed his inbox, he was greeted by a list of reports that needed cross checking and sources that needed to be verified. Harry and Ros, it seemed, were turning him into a glorified clerical administrator. He kneaded his eyes with the heels of his palms, weary even at the start of the day. Before he could become too downcast, however, Ruth had crossed the room and sat down beside him.

"The new boy's out with Harry and Ros," she explained, depositing a stack of pictures on his desk. "They won't be back until noon."

She meant Mahdi, who had joined Section D straight from training at Lucas' own request. He told Harry to snap up the young operative as soon as he heard that he'd applied to join the service full time. The Albany business drove it all clean out of Lucas' head, and he didn't remember until Mahdi appeared on the Grid the day before alongside Jo Portman. For reasons he couldn't quite explain to himself, Lucas felt more acutely embarrassed at his own fall around Mahdi. Maybe it was because the last time they spoke, he was still Lucas North, the respected Senior Case Office, in supreme command of himself and of every crisis breaking out around him. What he was now was barely a shadow of what he had been, and without the context the others had, Lucas was painfully aware of the fact that he just looked like a bit of a deluded loser to the new boy.

He drew a deep breath. "I'm sure he'll get on fine," he replied. "Anyway, what have you got for me?"

He flipped open the file on his desk to reveal of a set of close up stills from CCTV. Streets slick from recent rain, reflecting the glow of the streetlamps. Cars parked, stationary on both sides of the narrow road, illegally impeding the passage of traffic. A skip, belonging to a nearby building site was full of rubbish, sneakily dumped in there by surrounding business owners. A single dark vehicle was driving down the middle of the road, and Lucas could just make out a gunman leaning from the passenger window. Maya's surgery was just in view, but he could not see her.

"The car they're driving is a stolen Audi," explained Ruth. "The model is from 2005. But the number plates were taken from a Mercedes, purchased by one Vaughan Edwards from a second hand dealership in Paris, one week ago."

Lucas frowned as he took it all in. "And Vaughan's been dead for over a month now," he pointed out. "Does this person have access to Vaughan's actual funds, or is he just using him as a legend?"

"Vaughan had no funds at all," Ruth answered. "I donated it all to charity myself. So whoever is doing this is just using his name as a legend-"

"We know who it is, Ruth," Lucas cut over her.

"But that's the thing, we don't know. We only suspect," she replied. "We have no concrete evidence linking, er, our old friend, to any of this. As far as we're concerned, he's still in prison in Senegal."

Lucas sighed heavily. An all too familiar sensation of being boxed in and backed into a corner closed in on him. Where it was perfectly obvious what was happening, but the evidence to prove it eluded them. Frustrated and increasingly desperate, he turned in his seat to face Ruth fully.

"Have the Senegalese authorities not said anything?" he asked, clutching at a biro like he wanted to throttle it.

"Beyond confirming the murder," replied Ruth. "No."

Knowing how fluidly his two old 'friends' fitted up their deaths and flittered from one legend to the next, Lucas was even beginning to doubt the pictures he had seen of Vaughan's body. But logically, he knows the prison authorities would not go along with faking someone's death. They would have nothing to gain and everything to lose. Vaughan Edwards was definitely dead.

"I am still on to them, Lucas," Ruth assured him.

Lucas looked again at the CCTV image of Maya's two assassins. Both had their faces shielded by balaclavas and a note clipped to the image informed him the car was found. It had been set alight just outside Paris and was recovered early the previous morning. Some items found nearby were being delivered to Thames House later that day. Lucas looked at the report more carefully, before directing it towards Ruth.

"Do you know anything about this?" he asked her.

Ruth shrugged. "I'll keep you in the loop, though. I promise."

From that, Lucas deduced that Harry was still intent on keeping him as far from this Op as possible. He thanked her as she got up returned to her own seat, before turning to the list of tasks that he'd been sent. At least, some of those involved the diamond smuggling racket they were set on exposing. Again, he thought about Dylan Hughes' suspected involvement in that. But seeing as he was in Paris, buying dodgy second hand motors and pretending to be a dead accomplice, it seemed he wasn't involved after all. But still, he couldn't shake the feeling that one was leading him towards the other.

* * *

"You're nervous," Ros stated, glancing sideways at Mahdi.

The young Asian grinned, trying to look cocky and pretending the slight tremor in his hands as he lit a cigarette wasn't really there. They were in Hyde Park, waiting to meet an Asset: another first for the new recruit. The joy of life fountain spouted its toxic waters among the frolicking bronze cherubs to the utter indifference of the passers-by. The day was fine and had already brought the office workers out from under the café shelters and into the dappled sunlight and greenery of the parks. Ros spotted their man approaching from some feet away, dead on time.

"Here he is," said Ros, nodding towards Christopher Goodwin. "He's probably more nervous than you, if that helps."

"I'm not nervous," Mahdi protested, grinding his cigarette out as Goodwin reached them.

The Asset sat down beside Ros after glancing in Mahdi's direction. The stranger had been noted, but the Asset knew better than to comment on it. Not for fear of anything bad happening, but feeling it a pointless exercise.

"I did it," he said, glancing sidelong at Ros. "I got the information you wanted."

He reached into his jacket and produced a large, brown envelope that was almost bursting at the seams. Ros transferred it straight to her own bag without looking too long at it. But she looked happy, a small ghost of a smile teasing the corners of her mouth as she packed the envelope away.

"Do you recall seeing the name Dylan Hughes in any of your records?" she asked. "He's a man we're very interested in and he's known to operate in that region."

Goodwin thought about it for second. "No, sorry. But I'll keep a look out for it. Anyone else?"

"If there is, I'll be in touch," she replied, getting to her feet.

With the meeting over, Mahdi got up to follow her. It was still early days for him, but Ros was as impressed as she could be, but there was a long way to go. She slowed her natural pace to let him catch up as they left the park. Harry would be back on the Grid by now, and she wanted to brief him before they took their lunch break. In the meantime, Mahdi was naturally curious about the contents of the envelope.

"He's got the names and contact details of every diamond miner D'Vere's have dealt with in the last year," she explained as best she could while still out in the open. "We need to go through each of them, seeing if any come up on our radar."

"Do you think they might have terrorist links in the UK?" he asked.

"Possibly, that's what I want to find out," she answered. "Six can deal with the international guys. But any in the UK is our territory. One, in particular, is of interest."

"Dylan Hughes?"

Ros nodded. "Classified," she stated, before he could even ask. "But I'll tell you more when we're home and dry again."

But curiosity got the better of her once she was in the car. Before revving the engine, she peered inside the envelope for a quick glance at the top sheet. Goodwin had gone the extra mile by including an index of names, listed alphabetically by surname. She cast her eye over it, slowly going down the list of names and checking the H's. There was no Hughes, Dylan; nor a North, Lucas. As if he would make it that easy. But the Edwards, Vaughan caught her eye. She paused, halfway between folding back the page and fixed her eye on the name. While her brain seemed to perform backflips, she scarcely noticed how long she had been staring before Mahdi cleared his throat.

"I take you found your man then?" he said, jolting her back into the present.

Pulling herself together, she replied: "No, but someone else is."

Ignoring the questioning glance he responded with, Ros pulled out into the road bound for Thames House and pressed down on the accelerator. As she drove through the midday traffic, the facts quickly slipped through her memory. The list covered the last twelve months; Edwards had only been dead for one of those months. Fake Lucas, otherwise known to them as Dylan Hughes, had been in prison for the whole time. Frankly, anything could have happened and, knowing Vaughan Edwards it probably did. She needed to know when the transactions were made before deciding on the next step.

* * *

Ruth locked her computer and waited for Harry by the pods. That morning, they had barely spoken to one another and he'd been out at a meeting for most of the morning. By the time he caught up with her, he looked pale and drawn. Even the bite was somewhat absent from his muttered rebuke of the anonymous bureaucrats who were currently clogging up his in tray. When they met, they looked at each other from across a small distance, both still living in the memory of the previous night's tiff. Tentatively, Ruth extended her hand towards his, and Harry met her halfway.

"It's their argument," she said, meaning Ros and Lucas. "I never meant for it to become ours."

Ruth glances down as Harry's hand slips from her own, frowning and worried she'd said the wrong thing. But he puts his arm around her shoulders, drawing her in close and they squeeze through the same pod to head out for lunch. A second later, as they emerge on the other side, they release each other and walk through Thames House together, occasionally nodding to colleagues as they passed. As soon as they made it safely outside, they turned down the nearest side street, out of the path of the rushing crowds.

"We should know better than to bring work home with us," Harry said, leaning against the wall.

"I know, I know," she agreed, leaning in for a kiss.

Harry reciprocated gladly and Ruth felt a weight lift from her shoulders. Whatever was happening, they needed to pull together as a team at work and as a unit at home. Now more than ever if two of their most capable agents were busy tearing lumps out of one another. When they parted again, Ruth kept eye contact with Harry, her clear blue eyes holding his soft green. The air cleared, they both breathed freely again. Nearby, car horns blared to the angry shouts of drivers. A minute later, Ros marched past with Mahdi in tow, but they did not see Ruth and Harry, still secreted down the side street that doubled up as the Thames House fire escape.

"You said something the other night, about being led into a trap," said Ruth, looking back to Harry. Her hands rested lightly on the lapels of his jacket. "That this reminded you of when Lucas was captured in Russia. Why?"

He raised a rueful smile as he lifted one of her hands to his lips. "It was just a gut reaction," he replied, "but I'll tell you later. It's probably nothing."

Ruth let the matter drop and followed him back out into the main streets, heading towards the café where they liked to get lunch. The queue was stretching out of the door by the time they arrived, at the height of the lunchtime rush and Ruth cursed quietly under her breath. But in the fine weather, she didn't really mind. She could watch the people passing them by, the boats tugging up and down the river and blend into the normality of day to day life. But even now, dead men buying cars still encroached on her mind and Harry's words repeated in her mind. "We're being led into a trap."


	6. International Man of Mystery

Thank you to everyone who has read and reviewed this story, it means a lot.

* * *

**Chapter Six: International Man of Mystery**

Ruth turned the envelope over in her hands before sliding the blade of a bread knife under the flap and slitting it open with the serrated edge. It was from the General Register Office and inside she found a copy of a birth certificate, ordered as soon as she found out about the murder of Vaughan Edwards. Replacing the knife in the drawer of the kitchenette, she walked back on the Grid while searching for the information she needed. Those coming towards her dodged deftly out of the way and she ignored their miffed backwards glances. She groped for her seat while she registered the details on the certificate; Lucas assisted by nudging her seat towards her.

"Thanks," she murmured, not looking at him.

Sat back down again, she spread the certificate out before her, smoothing out the creases from where it had been folded and weighed it down with her empty coffee cup. Lewis Norwood, also known as Lucas North and (more lately) Dylan Hughes, was born in Bristol on the fifteenth of March, 1970. His mother was listed as one Jean Norwood (nee Baxter) and his father was named as John Norwood. Their occupations listed as a Librarian and a self-employed builder. Ruth tried the mother first; typing her full name into the national database. There was no picture of her on record, but according to the file, she died in 1984, when her son was just fourteen. John Norwood, according to the national database, emigrated in 1979, with an address given as Wellington, New Zealand. The information on him had not been updated, since he was no longer a UK citizen and was someone else's problem.

Leaning back in her chair, she frowned at the screen while she mulled it over. Jean Norwood died at a hospice in Bristol, so clearly had not emigrated with her husband. Unless she simply returned home to die; but to Ruth, a marital breakdown seemed more likely. Sure enough, when she ran a search in the General Register, she found a divorce granted the couple in February, 1977. Jean was awarded full custody of the son, while her husband was given unlimited access. All she had in front of her were the bare facts, and couldn't begin to guess at how the divorce went, the effect it had on Lewis and what led to his father's emigration. But, when she accessed New Zealand's records, she found John Norwood's file easily. She double checked the date of emigration and glanced down to check for a death date. It was then she had to bite back a squeal of triumph. John Norwood still lived in Wellington, New Zealand and among the information was an up-to-date phone number and current address.

Once she had the information she needed, she checked her watch. It was four in the afternoon UK time, making it four am in Wellington. The phone call could wait, but in the meantime she needed to think up a pretext for phoning a man on the opposite side of the world who, for all she knew, hadn't seen his son since the day he left England over three decades before. Having run up against the time zone dead end, Ruth returned to the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea, grateful to bump into the new boy, Mahdi. He was leaning out of the kitchen window at a perilous angle and seemingly oblivious to the sharp drop. A moment later, a thin stream of cigarette smoke billowed in the breeze before joining its carcinogenic counterparts in the London pollution.

"Er, Mahdi," she said, making the new recruit jump, yelp, hit his head on the window frame and drop the rest of his cigarette simultaneously. Ruth sighed. "You are allowed access to the roof space for that, you know. Or you could even go outside, in the car park, or cross the road to the riverside. Anything's better than suspending yourself out of a third floor window."

She smiled through her rebuke, even more so at the sight of him rubbing his cracked skull and messing his hair up. He grinned sheepishly, gesturing with his free hand back towards the still open window.

"Er, sorry," he winced, painfully. "You know…"

"Yeah, I think I do," she replied, not at all in the know. "If you're not sure of anything, please ask. We don't bite."

She reached for the kettle and filled it while Mahdi composed himself. When she finished, she turned back to find him smoothing his hair down in the distorted reflection of a chrome serving spoon fixed to the tiled wall on a tea towel hook.

"You look fine, honestly," she laughed. "Want a cup?"

He stopped faffing with his hair and brought down two cups from the nearby cupboard.

"I'll have tea, thanks," he replied. "Anyone else want one?"

"Just us," she replied. "The others can bloody well get their own."

"Ah, I see, special treatment for the new boy?" he asked, grinning cockily again.

"Make the most of it," she retorted. "You'll be making all ours by yourself come Monday."

Ruth dropped a tea bag into each cup, and turned to look at him again. "Have you found a place to stay in London yet?" she asked.

As far as she knew, Mahdi was travelling into London from Birmingham on Mondays, crashing on a cousin's sofa during the week nights and returning to his home city on Friday evenings. It was a get-up that served in the very short term, but would seriously start to annoy for any longer time period. The sooner he got settled in London full time, the better it would be.

"Nope," he replied, giving his head a shake which only caused him to wince again. "Something will come up soon though, I'm sure."

The kettle boiled and Ruth smiled as she dispensed the hot water into the waiting cups.

"Take that up to the roof," she said, nodding towards the back stairs. "Have a smoke in safety and by the time you get back, I think I'll have something sorted for you."

His expression changed, clearly impressed. "You mean, you can go into the database and fiddle my offers or something?"

Ruth had to suppress a snort of laughter. "What I mean is, I think I know someone who has a spare room!"

She was reminded of Danny Hunter who once, rather cheekily, set his own credit rating. Not that she endorsed such behaviour, of course, but the memory made her smile all the same. Mahdi didn't look disappointed at Ruth's inability to sneakily gazump anyone in the housing market, though.

"It's okay if they don't want me around," he said, "but I'd really appreciate it if they did, thanks Ruth."

"No," she replied, looking at him with earnest sincerity as she handed him his tea. "It's me who should be thanking you."

"Er, what for?" he asked, brow furrowing.

She smiled sweetly, but did not answer as she walked back to her seat on the Grid. Mahdi, she assumed, went the other way, up to the roof for a smoke. Meanwhile, she put down her tea and leaned against the desk, smiling towards Lucas. For a long moment, he tried to ignore her. But she could see his eye flicking sideways, glancing at her for a microsecond and wondering what she was up to.

"What?" he asked, voice a low rumble of suspicion despite the smile tugging at his lip.

"Lucas," she began. "You have a spare room, don't you?"

For another long moment, Lucas didn't answer. Already, Ruth could tell, he was scenting the bitter aroma of revenge in the air. She already knew he did. He knew she knew he did. But that didn't make it any easier.

"Yes," he whispered back at her, as though an answer she could barely hear would enable him to dodge the bullet that was already powering on its way towards him.

"That's good, I thought you could use some company," she replied. "Mahdi will be moving in this weekend."

"Ruth, no-"

"Beth Bailey," she cut him off, "sends her regards."

He turned to her sharply, but the protest was frozen on his lips. He had nowhere to run. Instead, he sighed deeply.

"What happened with Beth: I really didn't mean to take advantage-"

"But you did," she cut him off again, but then changed tack to smooth the way a little. "It would, however, look less like you did if you returned the favour."

After another small pause during which Lucas sagged in defeat, he raised a smile. "Of course," he replied. "He will be welcome to stay while he finds somewhere permanent."

Ruth turned back to her own work, riding an internal wave of triumph. It was a small, baby step to recovering her own latent self-assertiveness, as much as settling an old score. But she was mightily sick of people who thought she was a push-over. She returned to her file with a sense of renewed purpose.

* * *

By six that evening, Lucas was alone on the Grid. The view from the gent's window showed a city slowly succumbing to the dusk; street lamps lit against the lowering haze and a blur of distant headlamps as commuters fled the city in droves. He turned from the window, back towards the greying, cracked sink and splashed a handful of cool water over his face. His first day tied to a desk had crawled by in slow motion, all under silent scrutiny of Ros. Their relationship, or lack of thereof, was the raging elephant that had taken up residence in the room. One which he knew everyone was talking about when they thought he wasn't looking. Or was he just imagining that? There was no way to be certain, but he could imagine it and that was why it was no longer working.

With another handful of water, he splashed away the imaginary dust from his skin. Cool droplets running down his open collar and making him shiver as it soaked through the cotton shirt. Even though he hadn't done anything, he was exhausted. His job had become his life; out in the field was where he atoned himself, where he had found his salvation and now even that was slowly being withdrawn and there was no point blaming anyone other than himself. He had lived the lie, now he had to live with the consequences and his position had become untenable. He had just one real choice left: to wait until he was pushed, or take the leap himself.

He drew a deep breath as he wiped the water from his eyes and reached for a paper towel. The rough recycled paper scratched against his skin as he dried himself down again and tossed the scrunched up towel casually into the waste paper bin. That done, he could finally call it a night. He checked his reflection in the mirror, and for the first time noticed Ros regarding him coolly from the doorway of the gents. So lost in his thoughts, he had not even heard her entering. He turned to face her, perching himself on the edge of the sink.

"How long have you been there?" he asked, folding his arms across his chest.

"Not long," she replied, leaning against the wall. "I thought everyone had gone already, then I heard noises coming from here."

"It's only me."

"So, what's got you hiding in here long after hours?" she asked.

"Nothing," he replied, shrugging. "Just, Ruth."

"Ruth?"

He raised a ghost of a smile as recounted that afternoon's incident with Ruth, and how he'd come to acquire a new housemate. It made Ros smile in return, for a small moment before she jerked her head back and laughed out loud. The sound reverberating around the empty gents toilets. But it made him happy to see her smile and hear the rare sound of her laughter once more. It came to him like the first ray of light in the impenetrable gloom before the dawn. Lucas schooled his own expression, keeping his smile a rueful affair, in a concession to the fact that the joke was still on him.

"I think I'm starting to see our Ruth in a whole new light," said Ros, slowly regaining her composure. "I didn't think she had it in her."

Neither did Lucas, if he was honest. "It won't be so bad to share the rent with someone," he reasoned. _'I just wanted it to be you,'_ he thought, but did not say. Instead, he u-turned the conversation completely. "I've reached a decision."

"And what's that?" asked Ros, turning serious again.

"I will hand in my notice in the morning," he said. "After everything that's happened-"

"You will do no such thing," she cut over him, her tone firm.

He hadn't anticipated what her reaction would be, but he couldn't have imagined such an unflinching rebuttal. His brow creased into a frown as he looked back at her, noticing that her gaze never left his. He wanted to ask why, but didn't want to anger her any further either. Once again, the tension between them swelled restlessly and his recently raised hopes sunk in the tumult.

"I don't understand," he began, his voice tremulous.

"From what I understand you've run away from everything," she shot back at him. "You've run from who you really are and what you thought you did. So, for once in your wretched life you can damn well man up, stand your grand and face up to something, just this once. If you turn tail on us, yet again, there will be no coming back and you'll lose the respect of every person in this building for good. Stick around, and you'll get back what you lost and more."

With that, Ros zipped her jacket up fully and turned to leave. Her rebuke left Lucas stunned, frozen to the spot where he still perched on the edge of the sink. His mouth was running dry and he temporarily lost the ability to formulate any kind of reply. Ros had only told him the unyielding truth. It was what she was best at. However, she paused at the door and glanced back at him over her shoulder.

"Are you coming for that drink or not?" she demanded.

"You… you didn't say anything about-"

"I didn't realise I had to," she retorted, holding the door open for him. "Now come on. We're not going to the bloody George, either. You can take me somewhere nice for a change."

"Hey, now that's enough," he spluttered, pushing himself away from the sink. "Say what you like about my professional conduct, but I always had impeccable taste in boozers."

He thought he heard a snort of cold derision as they vacated the Grid, but he decided to let it slide. After this day of days, he knew he needed that drink, too. But Ros could lecture him on his personal failings all she liked, he knew his future in MI5 was far from certain. There was nothing either of them could do to change it.

* * *

That evening, Ruth lay on the couch with her face resting against Harry's chest. He was sipping a whiskey, calling out the answers to some dreadful quiz show and soundly abusing the lunk-headed contestants for getting it all wrong. She smiled as she listened to him, letting his little dog yap at the commotion. But every so often, however, her glaze darted to the clock on the mantelpiece, checking as the time crawled towards ten pm.

She stifled a yawn and rolled over as best she could while still lying over Harry, pinning him in place.

"I can't tell John Norwood I'm from a Market Research company," she said, tilting her head back to see into Harry's face. "It'd be a hell of a coincidence to dial the wrong number and, just like that, ring the father on the other side of the world."

"Mmm," Harry replied, letting it be known he was giving the issue his consideration. "I think we're going to have to stretch our ethics here and pretend to be an old friend trying to track his son down."

Ruth looked again at the clock; fifteen minutes to go.

"I don't mind doing that," she said. "But I need a convincing backstory. Otherwise, I'll lose my nerve and say something stupid. '_Hi, Mr Norwood, your son is a world renowned, international gangster currently gunning down all known associates of a mutual friend. You don't happen to have a contact number for him do you? It's just that I'm from MI5 and it seems as if he's been avoiding us lately.'"_

Harry chuckled. "It's worth a try," he retorted. "But, it might be safer to assume John Norwood knows nothing of his son's activities. Just say you're an old school friend looking to catch up and go from there."

Harry flicked the switch on the remote control, plunging the living room into silence. Ruby, the dog, leapt up on to the sofa, next to Ruth's sleeping cat, now that the show was over. For Ruth, however, it was only just beginning as the clock struck ten. Inwardly, both Harry and Ruth cursed the time zones as she reached for the phone and dialled the number. While the phone rang, she switched it to speaker so Harry could listen in.

While the phone rang, Ruth sat up so Harry could pour her another glass of wine. By the time the elderly man answered, she had the glass in her hands. Mr Norwood answered the phone the old fashioned way, by repeating the number back to her. Before she answered, Ruth glanced at Harry for reassurance, where he had settled in an armchair opposite the sofa.

"Hello, Mister Norwood, you don't know me but my name is Gill Farmer," she explained, careful to keep her tone light. "I was at school with your son, Lewis and was wondering-"

"You know my son?" the man replied, a note of urgency clear in his voice. "Do you know Lewis?"

Ruth paused as she glanced back at Harry. Nervously, she twirled the phone cord around her index finger, unsure what to say next. Or rather, how far to lead the old man into a deception. Harry, however, was in work mode and gave a nod of approval, a silent signal to press on.

"Yes," she replied, forcing a smile. "It's silly really, but Lewis was my first boyfriend and I last I heard he was living in Africa. But we lost touch-"

"Are you in Africa? Is that where you're calling from?" the man asked, he'd picked up a faint New Zealand accent over the years, but sometimes it gave way to the remnants of his west-country English.

"No, I'm back in London now and thought he might be too," she lied, leaving a bitter taste in her mouth. "I haven't seen him since we began uni, back in '89. Have you heard from him?"

Harry was leaning forwards, on the edge of his seat as he listened in. But John Norwood replied in a voice heavy with regret.

"Sorry, Gill, I haven't heard a word from Lewis since '84," he explained. "I've been searching and searching, but come up with nothing. I was back in the UK for a while in the late eighties, but when I went round the house and there was some new family living there."

The year struck a chord with Ruth, and plugged away despite Harry motioning for her to wrap up the call.

"His mother died that year," she said.

"Jean?" Mr Norwood cut her off, clearly distressed at the news. "Jean died when Lewis was fourteen?"

"Yes, I'm sorry Mr Norwood," she replied, confirming his fears. "I met him after that time, when he started the same school as me."

She had triggered the memories, now. All she needed to do was wait while Mr Norwood told her what he knew.

"He must have been with his grandmother then," he reasoned. "What was that place called? Elver Tower? Enver Tower? Something like that. It was down in London. Edith Baxter, her name was. My parents had already passed, you see and Lewis would have had no one else."

"Yeah," replied Ruth, writing down the address of the grandmother, even though she would be long dead now. With a touch of luck, she owned it and left it to her grandson, who kept it as a safe haven if all else failed during his adventures abroad. "Yeah, that's right. The Enver Tower you call it."

"I sent Lewis a letter inviting him to come out and stay here once he'd finished his schooling, but he mustn't have got it," Mr Norwood recalled. However, his voice trailed off again, the sadness was back in his tone as he added: "If you do track him down, tell him I miss him and won't stop looking, won't you?"

"Of course, mister Norwood," she assured him. "Thank you for your time."

By the time she replaced the receiver, Harry was back at her side with his arms around her. It didn't make her feel any better, but it was preferable to not having Harry there with his arms around her.

"It's a small step," she said, "but we're getting there."

But the sad fact was, they still didn't even know where the international man of mystery was. Harry tightened his grip on her, kissing the top of his head. When she pulled away again, she looked into his eyes.

"I almost forgot to mention amongst all this," she said. "But I got Mahdi into Lucas' flat."

Harry smiled now. "Oh, good."

"Yes," she replied. "So we can keep a much closer eye on Lucas now, at least."

"And he doesn't suspect?" Harry asked.

Ruth grinned. "No, he thinks its revenge for the Beth Bailey incident."

Harry laughed, pulling her back into a hug. "That was wickedly clever of you, Ruth."

"Well, there is a little bit of truth in that," she confessed, punctuating each word with a kiss. "The only thing is, Mahdi doesn't suspect either. But he'll help, he's keen to impress."

"Just remember, it's for Lucas' own good," Harry pointed out. "We may not need to do anything, so long as Lucas pulls himself together. This is just security, as well as sorting out the new boy's housing arrangements."

Two birds, one stone. Ruth kept telling herself that, but planting a stooge in a colleague's home still didn't feel right. Not even if Lucas had foisted an entire cloned army of Beth Bailey's into her home at one point. Still, she relaxed into Harry's embrace and put the work day behind her. The first crack had appeared in the nut, and it was better than nothing at all.


	7. Sobriety

**Thank you to everyone who has read and reviewed this story, it's greatly appreciated.**

* * *

**Chapter Seven: Sobriety **

It was nearing midnight by the time Ros drained the last of her wine and Lucas' head was spinning. He stood up, knocked a barstool over and apologised profusely to the glass collector whose foot got in its path. Having just deposited a precarious tower of empty glasses at the bar, the girl was mercifully empty handed at the moment of impact and did nothing worse than stumble backwards into the arms of a drunken city worker who was bellowing down his mobile phone. Still, to be safe, Ros steered him through the bar room and out into the cool night air, the shock of it making Lucas' head temporarily spin even faster.

After a stint in Tring that had lasted several months and his keeping a low profile since he'd returned to work, Lucas was learning about his newly reduced alcohol tolerance levels the hard way. "I'm fine! I'm fine!" he insisted as Ros smirked at him. But, soon enough he found his feet again, just as soon as his head ceased its whirling Dervish impersonation. But Ros was laughing again, peals of laughter interspersing her laconic observations of the evening's proceedings.

Nothing was said as they vacated the Bear and Ragged Staff pub; no conscious decision was made, but Lucas instinctively walked Ros home. They strolled, taking a leisurely pace along the pavements, following the main roads leading to Ros' house. Still not quite kicking out time, the streets were still empty. If there were any lights on in the windows of the houses they passed, it was the bedroom lights as most of the city's populace turned in for the night.

Slowly, Lucas' head cleared enough to attempt serious conversation.

"Any plans for the weekend?" he asked, feeling the full lameness of the question. It was only Thursday.

"Not really," Ros replied. "You?" Before he could reply, she laughed again. "Oh, I forgot, you'll be helping Mahdi move in."

"Actually," he replied, making an on the spot decision. "All this digging around in the past has reminded me of something."

"What?" she asked, slowing her pace and turning to look at him.

"My father's house, up in Cumbria, is mine now," he explained. "It's still there, as he left it. I was thinking of giving Mahdi some space to get settled in, so thought I might drive up and check that everything's in order."

"After all this time it's just sitting there empty?" she asked, frowning.

It was the house he grew up in. An old building, near the Church his father once preached in. Of course, the Church had a Rectory, but it had been in such a dilapidated state that they kept the house that had once belonged to his father's father. It passed from grandfather, to son and grandson while, unfortunately, grandson was indisposed in a Russian prison cell. For all Lucas knew, it was home to squatters, or falling down with trees growing through the old living room. But he couldn't ignore it forever.

"Yes, I think so," he replied. "I picked up the keys when I got back from Russia. But, you know, one thing and another…"

Work got in the way. Work, and Lucas' own frantic attempts to distance himself from his own history as much as possible.

Soon, they reached Ros' house. A three storey Georgian terrace in a neat row, with on street parking and glittering, mock-Victorian street lamps that gave the area a feel of a fifties spy novel. Appropriately enough. All that was missing was the swirling fog and the trench-coated silhouette. Lucas watched while she unlocked her front door and disabled the intruder alarm in the dull hall light. Last time he was here, he'd almost knocked himself out on the garden steps, and that was without the excuse of being slightly drunk.

"Do you want to come in and call a taxi?" she asked.

Lucas was about to accept, but a brainwave hit and he decided he needed the air. "No, thank you," he replied, turning to walk away now that she was home and safe.

"Are you sure?" she asked, holding the door open to tempt him inside.

Lucas just shrugged. "Honestly, I need the air. Work in the morning."

Ros raised a small, understanding smile. He needed to sober up before turning in, avoiding hangover hell on the Grid. Before he walked away, however, they looked each other up and down one final time. "Good night then," Ros said by way of farewell. Her voice was soft, almost affectionate; offset by a glimmer of regret in her hazel eyes as she went to close the front door.

"G'night," Lucas replied, just as the door closed.

He had to double back on himself. But he picked up his pace to make the journey in good time. When he reached the Bear and Ragged Staff, he cut through the car park. As he passed the pub, the trickle of revellers heading home was just beginning to thicken as the clock struck one am. Lucas scanned the drinkers, looking out for the drunk yuppie whose pint he spilled in the accident with the barstool, but there was no sign of him. The car park backed on to a football field and children's play park, the swings and climbing frames nothing but hulking, skeletal silhouettes in the poor lighting. Not even Lucas' footsteps could be heard as he passed diagonally across the soft turf of the pitch. He huddled deeper into his light jacket, woefully inadequate to ward off the night time chills.

Vaulting the low wooden fence that ringed the play area, he quickly made his way across the safety matting. Only when he passed the monkey bars did he notice a gaggle of gimlet eyed teenage drinkers huddled there. Their dilated eyes reflected the nearby streetlamps, but he did not hassle them and they returned the favour. But all the same, he felt their drugged eyes following him, could sense their chatter suspended until he had passed away from their group. He breathed a silent sigh of relief once he had vaulted the fence at the opposite side and emerged onto a network of streets that formed a short cut to his home.

"Oi! Wanker!"

One of the drinking, drugging youths called out, their voice echoing across the empty park in the direction of his retreating back. But Lucas just smirked, not bothering to even turn around until he'd gone a few more yards away from them.

"Charming," he whispered, carrying on his way. He glanced back over his shoulder, noticing that the youths were not looking at him. Instead, it seemed, their insults were aimed at someone else. With a shrug, Lucas carried on. Whoever it was wasn't being set on, the kids were probably just bored. Besides, he couldn't even see who or what had suddenly captured their interest.

He paused as he reached a poorly lit alley way that led to his street. There was one lamp on the corner, its light only penetrating a few feet into the darkness. For a brief moment, he regretted not hanging around Ros' to wait for a taxi, but after a moment's hesitation, he pulled himself together and carried on. He could walk the main road, but the silence was punctuated by the occasional shouts of drunks being disgorged from pubs and trouble was far more likely to turn up that way, and it would take longer. The alley led the way between the backs of two rows of terrace houses; it was narrow, with high walls topped with broken glass and barb wire to ward off intruders on either side. The effect rendered useless by perilously weak, battered wooden doors that led into the tiny back yards of the buildings themselves.

Just as he passed through the small pool of light, his eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness. Too late, however, to prevent him walking straight into an old fashioned metal bin and knocking it over. The sound of the metal crashing to the gravelled floor seemed amplified tenfold in the still night air and it made his heartbeat race. To compound matters, he regained his balance and trod on something soft that hissed and howled violently in response. He whirled round, only to find a tom cat, back arched and fur bristling like it had been wired up to the electric mains, hissing at him from the shadows. Only the animal's eyes flashed, reflecting what little light there was from the windows of the houses. Quickly, both the cat and Lucas assessed each other's threat level to be low, and the moggy slinked off towards the light at the mouth of the alleyway, undoubtedly to nurse his sore foot.

Lucas watched the cat vanish into the darkness, taking a moment to regain his breath and still his racing heart. The smell of the spilled rubbish rose dank in the air, making him wrinkle his nose as he took a backwards step away. It was then that he thought he saw the shadow move. The swift movement, caught from the corner of his eye, was gone in a fleeting second, but he was sure he saw it. When he tried to focus on what he thought he saw, it was already too late. All he could see was the darkened bulk of the upturned bin, the only sound was the cat, who found something else to hiss at. Or someone else. He was seized with a sudden compulsion to call out to whoever was there, but then pulled himself together again and tried to convince himself it was nothing.

With unnerving thoughts creeping up on him, Lucas turned around and set off a brisk pace. More than once, he glanced back over his shoulder, trying to rationalise what he saw. Maybe one of the kids from the playground followed him? Then he thought of Vaughan and Maya, both picked off by….

Lucas shook himself down, refusing to go there and internally chastising himself for scaremongering. But as he walked the rest of the distance, he was listening out for the sounds of some else's feet falling into step with his own, or shifting shadows following him through the alleyway. After two agonisingly slow minutes, Lucas emerged onto a main road, well lit and wide open. He turned a sharp left, relaxing and slackening his pace as his building came into view on the corner. The disused garage was boarded up and silent, but CCTV still scanned the open forecourt and offered scant comfort until he made it to his front gate. By the time he was fumbling with the front door key, he was trembling through nerves, rather than over-indulgence back at the pub. Once he heard the lock slide back, he virtually shoved the door open and almost fell inside, kicking it shut behind him and locking up again instantly.

He went straight into the living room and twitched the net curtain aside to look down the main road outside. Looking back towards the alleyway he had just emerged from, he couldn't see anything definite. Not at first. His mobile rang, chiming out shrilly into the silence, making him jump again. He answered Ros' call with his eyes still fixed on the mouth of the alleyway. It was then that he noticed it, just as he was about to turn away.

"Hey, did you get home okay?" Ros asked.

Lucas watched as the half shrouded figure looked back at him from the alley, but he couldn't tell where the stranger had come from. He was half in shadow, dressed in dark clothes. Had he stopped for a piss in the alleyway? Lucas couldn't rule it out.

"Yeah, just in," he replied to Ros, his mouth suddenly dry.

He couldn't actually tell whether or not the man was looking at him, but it felt as if he was. Lucas could almost feel the gaze boring into him, but it was purely in his head. The stranger melted back into the shadows and Lucas withdrew from the window.

"I just needed to make sure," Ros explained.

Lucas tried to smile, even though she couldn't see it.

"Look, I think I need to see you tomorrow," he said. "Are you on the Grid, or are you chasing the diamond smugglers still?"

Ros paused, as though she was gaging his panic level. Already, her tone reflected the change in his, since they had last spoken to each other less than an hour ago. "Are you okay? Has something happened?" she asked, sounding worried.

"Nothing," he replied, attempting to sound casual. "It's all good."

There was a pause on the other end of the line. Lucas could almost hear her brain whirring to come up with some super dry witticism.

"If it was anybody but you, Lucas, I wouldn't think anything could possibly happen between here and the pub that could incite a national crisis," she deadpanned. "But it is you, and I know that tone of voice. You're scared, but you're not telling me. You're not telling me because you don't want to cause a fuss. So do spill, if you so require?"

Lucas managed to raise genuine, albeit small, as she read him back to himself. "I think you know me better than you think you do," he replied, before changing tack. "Look, thanks for tonight. I needed it."

"You're welcome," she said, her tone soft again. "Try to sleep."

The call ended, leaving him feeling twice as alone as before, in an amplified silence that always seemed to follow such conversations. He hadn't switched the lights on in the living room, either. Only the streetlamps outside illuminated the room, making it appear cavernous in the swelling shadows. It made his skin crawl with nervous anticipation as he looked once more out of the window. The streets were empty, his neighbour's dog barked at the parked cars on the street but, otherwise, nothing was happening. In the end, he decided to take Ros' advice.

* * *

Harry and Ruth exchanged a look as Lucas recounted what had happened the night before. Ros took it all in silently, her facial expression remained unchanged and stony. She seemed to be watching a spot on the wall to Harry's left, but he knew she was taking in every word and formulating theories and conclusions. Harry was trying to do the same, in his own rational way: Lucas had been drinking, he was alone late at night, the strange altercation with the youths in the park unnerved him first. Then the bin and cat incident set him of edge even more, and the drunk passing by and stopping to relieve himself in an alley formed the unfortunate cherry on the cake. But, after everything else that had happened, he was unwilling to take any chances either.

"Could one of the youths followed you, perhaps looking for an opportunistic mugging?" he asked, keeping his tone even.

Even though the last thing Harry wanted to do was brush the incident off as though it were of no consequence, Lucas still looked crestfallen, as though he wasn't being taken seriously. Although Harry wanted to reassure him to the contrary, he decided to keep silent and let Lucas speak.

He shook his head, shrugging. "I can't say it wasn't," he admitted.

Now, he looked between Harry and Ruth, silently appealing to them for reassurance that he wasn't just paranoid. They were sealed up inside Harry's private office, just the four of them, as they dissected the events together. It was Ruth, as always, who came in to the aid of the victim.

"We can't afford to be complacent," she said, looking from Lucas to Harry. "Right from the moment we heard of Maya's death, we knew Lucas could be next on the list." Or rather, she knew and the others weren't ready to admit it. "We can arrange to have the premises watched at all times. But if we move you, Lucas, how do we know this odd ball lurker isn't simply going to follow you there, too?"

This uncharacteristically foreboding suggestion from Ruth even made Ros shudder imperceptibly. Lucas gulped, scratching nervously at the base of his throat as he always did when he felt the walls closing in on him. Harry noticed how Ros glanced over at him, the worry briefly etched into her normally placidly indifferent expression. However, it was Ros who came up with the temporary solution.

"What were you saying last night about heading up to Cumbria?" she asked Lucas directly.

Immediately latching on to the idea, Harry sat up sharply in his seat. "You have somewhere to stay up there?"

"Yes," Lucas replied, explaining about the family home that had been his for years. "I was planning on going this weekend anyway."

Ruth immediately made a note of it. "I'll make sure the local authorities know you're there," she said. "The electric and phone lines are probably off, so I'll get those restored too."

"Surely you're not suggesting that he goes swanning off on his own?" Ros put in. "It's the middle of nowhere, isn't it?"

The question appeared to have been directed at everyone except Lucas himself. But, it was Harry who answered. "How are you fixed for the weekend?" he asked back, regarding her warmly from across his desk. He was slowly coaxing her into it, silently hoping she would.

"Apparently, I'm spending it in the back arse of nowhere with Lucas," she answered, smiling through the acid bite in her words.

"I am still here, you know," Lucas feebly interjected. "And what about Mahdi? He has my spare key for moving in at the weekend."

"He will need to be briefed," Harry replied. "But it solves the problem of what to do when you get back. Having another agent in the flat with you is another layer of security. We'll have a more experienced officer watch over the premises, too. Like Ruth said, there's little point in moving you."

"Just one more thing," Ruth interjected. "Did you ever tell the fake Lucas North where your father lived and, if you did, would it be the sort of thing he would remember?"

All three of them turned to Lucas as he tried to recall those months, now so many years in the long buried past.

"I don't know," he answered, honestly.

"Then we assume he does know," Ros stated, matter of factly. "We need to be prepared for this one. Get a panic line established in the house as well. The fact that it's in the middle of nowhere is as much a curse as a blessing."

"I'm on it," Ruth answered. "Speak with Tariq before you go, too. He might have a few tricks up his sleeve that might help. He usually has."

Ruth had already brought them up to speed on her efforts to locate the imposter Lucas North, drawing a frustrated sigh from Ros. Their Lucas, however, simply looked as though he expected little else. A break through followed by the dull thud of the team hitting another dead end. But, with that dealt with, Ros and Lucas returned to the Grid. Only, is Ros' case, she was off to take some happy snaps of the manager of De Vere's diamonds accepting a package of illegally mined diamonds for their records. Harry watched her as she retrieved a long lens camera from beneath her desk and make for the door. Hopefully, soon, they would have the man spit roasted in time for supper.

Beside him, Ruth yawned expansively.

"I didn't think I'd be the one tiring you out," he murmured gently, giving her a wink.

Ruth grinned, playfully punching his arm. But, she soon turned serious again.

"I don't think a weekend break in the wilds of Cumbria is going to solve the problem, Harry," she admitted. "All this will still be waiting for him when he gets back."

"I know, I know," he sighed in response. "But it will help. It'll help them to learn to work together again, if nothing else."

Ruth raised a small smile. "There's hope yet, then?" she asked, rhetorically.

Compounding the matter was that morning's confirmation from the Senegalese prison authorities that the fake Lucas had been released officially from prison, citing time already served. The letter reeked of bullshit and she suspected large sums of money were being passed around somewhere, she just needed to do a little digging to find out where. But at least it confirmed their suspicions once and for all.

When Ruth packed her notes away, she noticed Harry regarding her closely over steepled fingers. He had that look in his eye, the look he always wore when he was about to pull a few strings and bend the rules, and would need her disapproving help the pull it all off.

"What?" she asked, flat and suspicious.

"The Home Secretary," he replied. "I need to see him and you know your presence always makes him a little more amenable to my wishes."

"Oh Harry," Ruth sighed. "You know you shouldn't, yet you know I will anyway. Come on then."

As Ruth followed Harry off the Grid, she got thinking about people being used as bait in this way. It wasn't that she approved, but she couldn't deny that it was useful. She thought again of Lucas and the man she was thoroughly convinced really was slowly stalking him. An idea crossed her mind, but in its current format was far too dangerous to be granted approval. None the less, she didn't dismiss it out of hand, either.

* * *

**Thanks again for reading and reviews would be appreciated, if you have a minute.**


	8. The Frozen North

Thank you to everyone who has read and reviewed this story, it means a lot. Thanks.

* * *

**Chapter Eight: The Frozen North**

Mahdi had no idea of what had been going on between Ros and Lucas. But, he had deployed his newly honed spy skills into working out that it was definitely something. Sometimes, being alone with them was like walking into a room in the middle of a furious row about which one knows nothing, yet is suddenly commanded by both sides to deliver a decisive verdict. In short, he found it painful. With his equally high regard for both garnered through a chance encounter almost three years ago, he found himself trying to find ways to help one without mortally offending the other.

It came to a head just before he and Ros left the Grid to intercept a meeting between the Chief Executive of De Vere's diamonds and some highly dubious smugglers. All the more surprising to Mahdi, as it had seemed to him as though his colleagues were beginning to set their differences aside. Ros was fetching a digital camera and checking it over, while Lucas got his coat. The three of them meeting by the pods, where Ros proceeded to look Lucas up and down in ill-supressed surprise.

"Where d'you think you're going?" she asked, brow darkening into a frown.

Lucas, who'd been looking upbeat for the first time since Mahdi joined Section D, slowly became crestfallen. His gaze flickered sideways, in Mahdi's direction, reminding him that he was the one who'd intruded upon this long running row. In response, Mahdi found himself backing away before he'd even formulated a convincing excuse.

"Mahdi, stay there."

The tone of Ros' voice brought him to a standstill, trapping him between two quarrelling ex-lovers. Whatever Ros had planned, she clearly wanted a witness, making him even more nervous.

"I thought, after our conversation last night-" Lucas began.

"Actually, I asked him to come," Mahdi suddenly blurted out, taking both Ros and Lucas by surprise. They both turned to look at him, making him flush in the face. His mind whirled as he tried to construct an at least semi-plausible excuse for having done such a thing. "What I mean is, I just assumed he would be anyway-"

"Really?" Ros stated, monotone and giving a hard look.

What little resistance Mahdi had in him drained away.

"No, not really. But now seemed like a good time to make something up before this gets even more awkward," he replied with tension breaking honesty. "Hope you don't mind," he added, with a shrug.

After a long pause and a heavy sigh, Ros made for the pods. "We're going to be late," she stated, chivvying them along as if the holdup was their fault. She didn't say that Lucas couldn't come, so he tagged along anyway, nodding his thanks to Mahdi as they vacated the Grid.

* * *

The exchange was taking place in the Docklands. Ros' asset was already there, wired and ready to go, sat in the back of a gleaming company car along with his CEO. But they were out of sight, audible only to the techies secreted in the back of an observation van disguised as a maintenance vehicle for the nearby Hospital. Ros, Lucas and Mahdi stole out of the back, sliding the rear doors closed as quietly as possible before heading down towards the back, leaving Tariq alone to man the audio equipment. The day was clear, they were set back from the main city centre and, with luck, interference would be minimal.

The warehouses in this part of the Docklands had lain abandoned for years. It was one of the few stretches that had escaped the spreading stain of gentrification. The air of dereliction, emphasised by clapped out machinery, leaking nissen huts and cranes half submerged in the softly lapping Thames made it ideal for any illegal business transactions. The three of them spread out, Lucas skirting the clearing towards the main road, keeping an eye out for approaching vehicles. Mahdi, however, stayed close to Ros. He wasn't ready to strike out alone just yet.

Noticing just how far away they were from the car with the diamond traders inside, Mahdi squinted at him, keeping them in focus.

"I hope the zoom on that thing works," he remarked, with a nod to the camera in her hands.

"Zoom, and image enhancement back at the Grid," she pointed out, letting herself into a discreet nissen hut.

"Should have guessed you'd have some technological wizardry on hand," he murmured, looking down the steep incline to where the lone car was parked.

She was about to say something back to Mahdi, when Lucas' voice sounded in her ear.

"Black Land Rover approaching," he said, then repeated it again, reading out the number plate.

Ros could feel the new recruit go rigid as she raised the camera to her face. They were some way off, but afforded a clear enough view of what was going on down there. A small dust trail from the earth tracks followed the progress of the Land Rover as he drew to a halt close to the car. As a precaution, she took a backwards step, deeper into the Nissen hut as men dressed in sharp suits got out of both cars. There was only four of them, one of whom was their asset. That still left three that could potentially spot them, hidden away.

They gathered in a small knot around the back of the Land Rover, the boot was opened and Ros started taking pictures as soon as she zoomed in as much as possible. Mahdi took the initiative by drawing her attention to certain details, like when one of the men was looking in roughly their direction. She got a full face picture of the man, who was in the middle of setting out from documents on the roof of the first car, weighing them down before they blew away in the breeze. The tallest of the men signed them, but handed them over to Ros' asset for safe keeping. Ros smiled, knowing that photocopies of those same documents would be waiting on her desk come Monday morning.

Down by the river, boxes were quickly lifted from the Land Rover and transferred to the other car, Ros taking a shot of each transfer. Then, the end. Two of the men shook hands, Ros' asset and his colleague returned to their vehicle and drove away; the Land Rover men following suit moments late. Perfectly satisfied with the afternoon's efforts, Ros turned to Mahdi, surprised to see him wearing the startled expression of a bar room brawler thwarted of a good fight.

"Was that it?" he asked, looking from Ros to the fresh tyre tracks in the over grown dirt road.

Bemused, Ros' own expression lightened with laughter. "What did you expect? World war three?"

Mahdi shrugged, grimacing as though he'd just swallowed a bee. "I dunno," he replied as Ros led him out of the Nissen hut. "I just thought … well, I don't know what I thought would happen. Something else, I guess."

"Shows you expected the unexpected, I suppose," she reasoned. "Always be prepared for that in this job, you never know what might happen."

He would learn, she thought wryly to herself as they returned to the van. She found the rear doors open, where Lucas and Tariq were deep in conversation over a coffee from a nearby Starbucks. They hastily fell silent as she approached, almost standing to attention.

"Recording go okay?" she asked, glancing sharply at Tariq.

"Got everything," he replied. "Didn't say much though. But your man did get them to repeat what was in the boxes."

Another small success: spoken confirmation of their contraband dirty diamonds. They shut up the van and returned to the Grid, pulling out into the city bound traffic. It was only three in the afternoon, but she and Lucas were now done for the day. A whole weekend, far from the Grid, far from London in the wilds of Cumbria awaited them. The prospect becoming more appealing every time it crossed her mind.

* * *

Harry and Ruth called it a day earlier than usual, too. They were home by five, Ruth blitzing the whole house in a cleaning spree as though she expected a visit from the Queen at any minute. The acrid, sterile stench of bleach wafted from the kitchen and bathrooms, clouding even the hallways. In the living room and dining room, mists of aerosol air fresheners choked him, hitting the back of Harry's throat as he tried to breathe. Every spare inch of carpet had been vacuumed, and she had set him to work with strips of cellotape, the adhesive side used to clear dog and cat hairs from the upholstery and every cushion and throw in the place.

"Why not use the damn vacuum cleaner?" he moaned while trying to find the end of the tape on the roll.

"You'll stretch the fabric, Harry!" she shot back.

Harry scarped his thumbnail along the tape roll for a few more seconds before giving up and throwing it back in the kitchen draw with a muttered curse. When he returned to the living room, he simply reversed the cushions so the hair sides were obscured. All this for a quiet, "informal" meal with Catherine, who wasn't even due until tomorrow!

He put the kettle on, cursed at the sound of another muffled thump coming from upstairs and drummed his fingers against the kitchen counter. Even the cat had been banished from the living room, and the mournful yapping of Ruby the dog echoed across their postage stamp of a back garden. He resolved to bring her some bacon as a treat later, to fortify her for the long days ahead during their royal visit.

Once he'd made two cups of tea, he carried them upstairs to where Ruth was waging war on the first floor of the house. He found intimately entwined with a vacuum cleaner outside the guest bedroom, attempting to breach the door and wearing a grimly determined expression on her flushed face. She stopped, the upturned nozzle of the hoover smacking loudly against the upper doorframe and fixed him with a steely eye.

"You could help," she suggested, raising a brow.

"Or you could relax for five minutes and have a cup of tea," he replied, stepping round her and entering the guest room.

She didn't reply immediately and Harry thought she was about to argue. However, she merely dropped the vacuum where she was standing, sagged her shoulders and collapsed on the bed beside Harry.

"Sod it," she sighed, heavily. "I'm parched."

Harry smiled brightly, placing both mugs on the bedside table. It was unfortunate that neither Catherine nor Graham had made it to their wedding. Graham did not reply to his invitation (just as he hadn't replied to his dinner invitation) and Catherine had been on a fact finding tour of some god-forsaken, Central American hellhole that Harry didn't want to know about. It was easier that way. So far, Ruth and Harry's children's paths simply had not crossed. It was only thinking back on it that made Harry realise just how bad that actually was.

She sat up again, slouching against the headboard of the bed as she reached out for her tea.

"But it's got to be done now," she moaned. "Tomorrow I'm cooking the dinner."

"I can do that," he pointed out.

"No, I know, but…" her words trailed off.

"You know, Ruth, that contrary to outward appearances, I'm not entirely useless," he explained, clearly exasperated. "My life skills extend above and beyond filling in forms and paper work."

He had lived alone since the mid-eighties, when his marriage to Jane had collapsed and divorce ensued. Ruth, however, didn't seem to realise he'd survived in that isolation vacuum the same way everyone else did: by learning to do stuff all by himself. Still, Harry relaxed and reclined on the narrow bed alongside Ruth, who fell into a silence of uncertainty.

"I just want everything to be perfect," she stated, crestfallen. "Just for once, I want this to right."

Harry's irritation died a final death as he wrapped his free arm around her shoulders and kissed her forehead.

"It will be," he assured her. "But Catherine knows we live in a real house and not a sterile show home."

Her hair had been scraped back into a pony tail, but her toils had loosened long strands that fell by the side of her face. He couldn't resist batting it away, like a cat pawing at a loose thread. She laughed, batted his hand away and kissed him again before resting her head against his shoulder.

"I want to make a good impression," she said, imagining Catherine running her forefinger along every surface, looking for dust. "Anyway, have you heard from Graham?"

Harry drew a deep breath as his fledgling good mood crashed in the remaining dust.

"Play it safe," he advised her. "We'll cook enough for four, but if there's still only three us it'll be Ruby's lucky day."

"And Fidget," she interjected. "Got to treat them fairly Harry."

Harry pulled a face. "It's only a cat and she's a dog!"

"He!" Ruth snapped. "He is a cat!"

Ruth playfully swatted at his thigh, but she was grinning at the same time. Once she had composed herself, she checked the clock on the bedside cabinet, pointing it out to Harry.

"Eight o'clock," she said, warily. "They'll be there now. Ros and Lucas."

"Has no one ever told you that you spend too much time worrying about other people?" he asked.

"Harry, this is serious," she said. "If those two don't get their act together, one will have to be let go."

Harry wished more than anything that he could contradict her. But it was all too true, and well she knew it. He wouldn't condescend her with words of false comfort. However, if it did come to that, there was no real choice, as far as he was concerned and he was certain Lucas would, in time, be very happy in another department. He needed Ros right where she was, irrespective of what his feelings towards Lucas were. At the end of the day, Ros had not lied to them and only ever suffered one lapse of judgement: a miracle, in their business. But still, Lucas…

"Let's just hope it doesn't come to that," he replied, pinning his last hopes on an isolated field in the middle of Cumbria.

Ros stepped out of the car and sniffed tentatively at the air.

"So, this is it then," she stated, "the frozen North."

* * *

Lucas glanced over at her, finding the look of uncertain distaste on her face amusing. While Ros adapted to her new, rural surroundings, he fetched their bags from the boot of the car and carried them into his old house.

It was no longer in the middle of a field. They had a rather new looking road cutting right through the middle of the field, and another house directly opposite them. But that was empty, with a 'For Sale' picket hammered into the front garden. Further down the road was a petrol station and convenience store, the last stop until motorists reached the nearest town, over eight miles away. Other than that, it was still unbroken countryside. Give it another twenty years and there might even be a second house next to the new one.

"Do they accept sterling up here?" asked Ros, glaring in the direction of the convenience store.

"No, we trade only in women and livestock," he called over to her from the doorstep. "It's not all bad though, the English language is widely spoken, replacing the guttural grunts that passed for conversation before the first Southerners arrived."

She walked slowly up the narrow driveway, her heels clicking on the tarmac. An interested and curious look on her face. "Oh really? When did the settlement begin?" she asked.

Lucas shrugged. "Erm, must've been about 1990-ish," he answered.

"Ah, after you left," she rejoined. "That explains a lot, you poor thing."

They exchanged beatific smiles as Lucas pushed the front door open. But the whining, grating noise that came from the rusting hinges made them both grimace. The gust of damp and wood rot that rushed out to greet from within almost had them reeling. Ros muttered an oath as she braced herself to follow Lucas inside. A copy of the Daily Telegraph, from 2005, was folded on the kitchen counter. An old tin kettle was still sitting on the hob, one of the ones that whistled when it boiled. Ros hadn't seen one of those in years. A Psalm was copied out in a childish hand, each line a different colour and decorated with a loopy, colourful pattern that didn't resemble anything, but was pretty all the same. It was framed and mounted on the wall, beside a window that looked out over vast, rolling acres of land. When she looked closely at the Psalm, she saw a little message scrawled in black: "For Daddy, by John." The year was 1977 and he must have been six years old. In all the years she had known Lucas, even after everything they'd been through, she had never imagined him as a child. Lucas didn't seem to have existed in her mind at all until the day he came back from Russia, like Harry had magicked him out of thin air.

Now, she had stepped into his personal History. The most intimate and honest of histories, uncensored and undoctored as chronicled by a long dead father who hadn't seen his only child in years. She turned to look at Lucas, who was sniffing cautiously at the interior of the old tin kettle and pulling faces at it. After a few seconds, he realised she was looking at him with a most peculiar expression on her face.

"You alright?" he asked, battered, blackened kettle sill in hand.

She nodded. "Fine."

Lucas resumed his sniffing, before evidently deciding the kettle's days were over. Luckily, he'd packed a travel one to replace it with. Ruth had also made good on her promise to get the electricity restored and the convenience store down the road would have milk and teabags. Feeling like an imposter in someone else's memories, she urged him to stay while she visited the shop down the road just to get some air.

"Don't forget the chocolate biscuits!" he called after her.

How could she forget?

* * *

**Thank you again for reading, reviews would be lovely.**


	9. Love Remains

Thank you to everyone who has read and reviewed this story, it means a lot.

* * *

**Chapter Nine: Love Remains **

"_Now I know what a ghost is. Unfinished business, that's what."_

_(Salman Rushdie, "Satanic Verses")_

Mahdi cursed as the wheels on his suitcase rolled over the postcard lying on the doormat. He hadn't seen it lying there, but at least the bulkier envelopes of that day's mail had been swept back as he shouldered the door open. He let the door swing closed behind him and parked the suitcase at the foot of the stairs before picking up the postcard. The picturesque, rugged coastline of Penzance were now augmented by 3D tracks right down the middle where the wheels had dug into the card. They had also busted open the delicately perforated edge of the false back that lay beneath the surface, on which the sentence "have a nice day" was written. He peeled back a little more of the false surface, revealing a much more detailed message beneath.

"I know where you live," it began, rather ominously.

Deciding that he and Lucas hadn't quite reached a 'reading each other's mail' stage in their working relationship, he decided to put it to one side until he could get in touch with his colleague again. In the meantime, the house was under surveillance and an observation van was parked on the street, disguised as a City Council vehicle. If anything happened, he could reach them within seconds and, rather suddenly, he developed an all new appreciation for them.

* * *

Both worn out after a long journey on top of a day's work, Ros and Lucas hadn't progressed far into the house when they first arrived. But they awoke on the Saturday morning and, after breakfast in the nearest town, returned ready for their first assault on the old ancestral home. They had made a point of passing the Priory that was once Lucas' father's, finding it completely renovated and as good as new, home to the new Minister and his family. There had been a tree growing through the living room when Lucas saw it last.

Work began as soon as they returned. Round the back of the house, things were exactly as Lucas remembered: a vast expanse of not much. A field stretching away into the distance, with two naked, storm bent old trees gnarled and dark against the pale blue sky. Lucas smiled as he recalled his father telling him that he and his mother once re-enacted a scene from Wuthering Heights during a violent storm on that field, before they were married. The memory sparked back into life a long dormant connection to this old place; it made him remember he lived here. Once, he had a life here.

A dry stone wall still marked the boundary of their property. Beyond that, it was farmland now laid to waste after the farmer had gone bankrupt following the foot and mouth crisis, more than a decade ago now. Rusting, skeletal machinery still lay haphazard and hazardous across the forecourt and a lone, skinny pony cropped the grass out the back. When he noticed Lucas and Ros hauling an old, musty sofa out into the back garden, he ambled over to say hello to them, the old bones rippling under its skin with every step he took. Ros darted back into the kitchen, reappearing seconds later armed with carrots to feed him.

"He must belong to someone," she commented, smiling and happy as the pony almost swallowed her whole hand in his carroty enthusiasm.

Lucas shrugged. "He's wild. There's loads of them round here."

They used to try and tame them, when he was a child. He was friends with the farmer's kids, the boy being the same age as him. The little girl always wanted them as pets, but Lucas always liked to think of them as free, just munching the grass where and when they would. But older boys from the nearby town used to torment the horses, until Lucas saw one deliver a kick so powerful to a youth's head it near killed him. Ever since that day, Lucas had given horses as a species as wide a berth as possible. But this one munching happily from the palm of Ros' hand looked friendly enough, too old and skinny to do much else. His wide, equine eyes followed Ros longingly as she made her way back into the house.

"Poor thing, he hasn't got a shelter," she said, looking back at him through the kitchen window.

"The farmhouse," he replied. "There'll be empty barns there. And the locals look after them."

"Maybe he remembers you," she remarked. "He's old enough."

Lucas laughed. He hoped so. Because everyone else he remembered from his life here had vanished seemingly into thin air. Even the little infant school he went to had been converted into a petrol station.

Every window in the house was opened, letting in much needed fresh air. Old, wormwood infested furniture broken up and carried outside to be stacked for a bonfire. Old clothes, unfit for recycling, were added to the burn list. Old pots and pans were binned. Everything else, personal items and ornaments, were boxed up for sorting at a later date. An old analogue TV, long redundant since the digital switchover, was set aside for the junkyard. For the time being, it was set down next to the sofa out the back, like an alfresco living room. Even the coffee table was out there, on the bonfire.

"Did you have a sister?" asked Ros, frowning at him.

"No!" Lucas retorted, turning to see what she had found. She was holding up an elaborate, tiny gown of satin and lace, across her chest as though she wanted to try it on for size. Even with the sleeves stretched out, they barely reached her shoulders. Lucas flushed red. "That was my Christening gown," he informed her. "It's traditional!"

Ros grinned, but decided not to take the piss. "We're keeping it," she said, setting it to one side. "That is just too traditional to burn."

Lucas rolled his eyes, promising himself that he could throw it into the inferno while Ros wasn't looking. He carried on dismantling the chest of draws in his father's old bedroom; the bedframe was already reduced to pieces, ready for adding to the blaze. When, after a few more minutes, Ros' voice interrupted him again.

"Look, it's an old photo album," she said, carrying the large, leather bound volume over to him.

The mattress from the bed was still in the room, so Lucas carried it over there and sat down. Ros followed him, with the album already open. Cross legged on the mattress, Lucas leafed it open, showing old black and white pictures of his grandparents, all dead by the time he was four. He remembered none of them, but for their names. Ros pointed to each, and he replied with their names and how they were related. Over the leaf, his parents' wedding day, his mother in a long, white dress with lacework at the collar and sleeves.

"That is beautiful!" Ros sighed. "1920s, completely vintage. It'd be worth a fortune now."

The wedding day progressed to the honey moon, and straight to his birth as the smiling young couple were joined by a pudgy baby clutching a rattle in his fat fist. First steps; first birthday; first day at school; first sports day; first day at high school… on went the photographic journey through his early life. First car; first girlfriend; first day at University; the end.

Lucas turned the page again, where there were no photographs, but a cut out from a local newspaper: "Have you seen my son?" the headline ran. "Minister's son missing for six months," explained the blurb before the main article began properly. The breath hitched in Lucas' throat, causing him to choke and Ros covered his hand with her own.

"Don't look anymore," she said, her voice soft. "What's the point in upsetting yourself?"

Gently, she tried to prize the album out of his hands, but Lucas dug his nails in, refusing to let go.

"Atonement," he replied, his voice barely more than a whisper.

As though she understood, Ros reluctantly let go of his hands. He needed to look at each and every one of them, to accept what he had done. The next article was bigger, a large photograph of his father holding up a photo of him, as a teenager. The caption at the bottom explained it was the most recent picture of John that Minister Bateman had, taken in the summer of 1994.

"Minister Vows to Find Missing Son", read the bold headline.

"He's all I have left," his father explained in the article. "I want John to know: whatever he's done, wherever he is, no one will be angry with him. My home is his home and my door will always be open to him. Police say he is an adult and left of his own free will. But John is my son; my only child; the death of his mother had upset him greatly and I worry that's why he's gone. Why can't they see it like that? John is vulnerable."

Numb, Lucas turned to the next page, and another report in the local press. This dated from 1999. "Minister Resigns to Search For Son, Missing Five Years."

"My faith gives me the strength to carry on," explained former Methodist Minister, John Bateman senior. "God guides me, and I know I'm doing the right thing. My work in the community will continue, but my resignation will allow me to spend more time in London, where sightings of John have been more frequent than anywhere else. Yes, identifying bodies thought to be his is the most trying test of all. One letter I got was anonymous, and said that John was dead and buried under a Mangrove Tree in Senegal and that I should give up searching. But I will not; I cannot. I pray for fortitude, it's all I have left."

Lucas barely recognised his father in the final article. He was sagging with age and care, hair white and receding. His glasses slipping down his long nose. The date was August, 2005. "Ex-Minister Admits His Son Maybe Dead." The words were like a punch in the gut to Lucas.

"The hoaxes are the hardest," his father explained, in the article. "I got one phone call from a woman in North London, who claimed that her neighbour looked just like my John, but that he was using the name Lucas North. The information she gave was so detailed and so precise, that I went instantly to London to see for myself. When I got there, the house was empty and up for sale; the seller was a recently widowed Russian lady. There's no record of a Lucas North anywhere, and the whole sighting was a cruel joke. That was in the year 2001, and there hasn't been a single sighting since then. Nothing. Since then, I have become regional coordinator for the National Missing Person's helpline … helping others in my situation also helps me…"

"Stop now," Ros' voice was firm.

She took the photo album from him and closed it, placing it on the floor beside the mattress and led him outside, into the open air. His father must have come within touching distance, back in 2001. Elizabeta must have only just left; he must have only just been taken.

* * *

Half an hour later, they were drinking tea from polystyrene cups purchased from the corner shop, sitting out the back on the old sofa destined for the junkyard, in the warm sun. There was just the first hint of summer on the horizon, even in the frozen north. The field looked cheerful, its emerald green given a golden hue in the early afternoon light. The silent, stillness of rural Cumbria helping Lucas to slowly process all he had learned. Did he really think his father would conveniently forget he had a son? To stop himself from thinking about it, he turned to the house again.

"I think I'll cut to the chase and burn the whole place down," said Lucas.

"Do you really think that'll make it go away?"

Lucas glanced at Ros from the tail of his eye. She was sat down with her feet up on the old TV set, gazing into the woodpile as though it was already lit and nursing her cup in both hands. Her hair was falling out of its pony tail, one long strand falling behind her ear.

"You're beginning to sound like Loopy Lydia," he brusquely informed her. "Even the most innocuous of statements is turned into something else to trip me up."

"You know me better than that," she sighed. "But how are things going with her? Are you going to tell her what we found back there?"

Lucas thought for a moment before answering, a myriad of responses going through his head. It was complex, his feelings were conflicted. Eventually, from out of the swirl in his head, he selected an answer he felt to be satisfactory: "I don't know."

"Would you care to elaborate on that?"

He turned back towards the woodpile, the relics of his parent's life and home waiting to be reduced to ash and dust. The wind will do for whatever's left of them. Meanwhile, he sipped at his tea, tasting the polystyrene more than anything else, and wrinkled his nose. A fundamental failure to communicate was what landed them both in this situation; communicating now might just set them on the road to reconciliation once more. If not in a literal sense, at least they could be friends once more and Lucas wanted to. More than anything he wanted to open up and disgorge himself, once and for all, of every sordid detail to be in with a chance of redemption. But there's always something in the way, a glass ceiling in his head. He knows the things he wants to say, can almost see the memories playing out again, but it's like someone's pressed a mute button when he tries to give them voice.

"We should burn this off now," he said, nodding to the woodpile. "I'd hate for a hedgehog to crawl under there while our backs are turned; I've caused enough death already."

"When did she die?" asked Ros, ignoring his nature concerns. "What year?"

"Who?"

"Your mother."

The question took him by surprise. He felt his body stiffen; the answer he knew perfectly well, but still didn't spring immediately to mind. She was a slender woman who wore her hair in curls. It was dark, like his. Her eyes were blue, like his. There were small traces of her everywhere and lingering on in him. After Dakar, he felt that to so much as speak her name with his own lips was to tarnish it – how could someone so fundamentally wrong have come from her? She was dead by then and he was glad of it for what he had done. But nothing can break the chains of DNA: he is still her son; she his mother and cold in her grave; as oblivious to his faults as she is his strengths.

His father always taught him that although people die, they never truly leave. That if you stand still in a silent place, you will hear them and feel their presence around you; most especially in times of hardship and need. He always imagined it as a residual haze of the human soul; that if looked for directly will evaporate before your mind can register it. On more occasions than he could count, he woke up in the middle of the night in prison, when it was silent in the cells and even the guards were off at a distance. He would try then; lie still with his eyes closed and picture her, trying to feel her arms around him, smell her perfume; to catch just a glimmer of her presence. As though he could conjure her ghost like a Blackpool stage act; he would search every crack in the cold stone walls for a sign of her. It was always followed by nothing. Just like her son, she had gone away and never came back.

Even so, Lucas can picture her still: walking their big shaggy dog out into the hazy dusk, her pink wellies and matching raincoat, and the mutt straining the leash. Even right now, if he turns to the kitchen window the memory of her will look back at him, hand raised in forlorn gesture of farewell as he and his father go to watch for birds. Bullfinch, Chaffinch, Cuckoo, Jays and Linnets. His father taught them all to him and he could spot them now, could recognise their calls from a mile away. He remembered the bird book, in which he'd checked off the one's he had seen. The squashed corned beef sandwiches wrapped in tin foil and flasks of hot cocoa in the winter. A heady scent of wet earth and bracken. If he was really lucky, he would find a feather caught on the gorse for his collection, kept in a shoe box under his bed, each one carefully labelled: species, date, location. Did she ever accompany them? Lucas couldn't recall, but she always waved them off from the kitchen window.

He glanced over his shoulder, to where the blank glass of that same kitchen window reflected nothing more than the sunlit field, the colour strangely drained and cold. She is dead; she is gone.

The realisation hit him again, bringing a wave of guilt and self-recrimination for what he's done. Not Dakar, or the lies, but for barging back into their home and smashing up what was left of their lives. His parents are gone now, but all this was still theirs. He looked up to the sky, blinking rapidly into the pale blue sky, darkening now as dusk settled in.

The touch of Ros' hand on his arm jolted him out of his reverie. "You look a million miles away," she said.

"1994," he replied, answering her original question. "That was when she died."

Their eyes met, but Ros soon looked away again, just a pale expression of sorrow in her deep green eyes.

"The year before you left," she pointed out.

Lucas managed a pained smile. "I can imagine what Loopy Lydia will make of that."

"Is it any wonder?" Ros raised a brow. "Everyone's entitled to go a little crazy when their mother dies. How did it happen?"

"Slowly," he replied.

She had cancer. Every time he went home, she was that little bit thinner, greyer, insubstantial. Step by step, his mother faded away until all that was left was transparent skin stretched on sharp, angular bones. The only colour in her was the varicose veins, stark and purple under the paper skin. Once, he pressed his forefinger to her wrist to feel her pulse and he almost broke the bone, snapping like a brittle summer twig. He recalled the relief her death brought, and then the all-consuming shame at having thought such an abominable thing. But also he remembered the big shaggy dog they had, who was put down before his illness caused too much pain and suffering. How strange we should therefore allow our loved ones to suffer such degrading, agonising deaths. His father was quicker, according to the medical reports he accessed upon his return from Russia. A quick stroke and his flame was finally snuffed a day later. Did his father think of him as he lay dying? Probably, if the papers are to be believed.

He reached back into his memory again, of the night his mother died. When the pump on her orthopaedic bed was switched off, and the terrible silence that followed. There she lay, slack with death, her blues eyes closed forever. He held her impossibly fragile hand in his own until she grew cold; a hand so pale and wrinkled it reminded him of a Starling's claw. His father tried to pray, but for the first time ever, the word of God stuck in his throat. Not until after the funeral could old John Bateman Senior bring himself to talk about his job and they were the last words he ever said to Lucas. "Love never falleth away," he had said, quoting Tyndale's New Testament. Maybe that was true: they're both gone now, but still the love remained.

"Her name was Beatrice," said Lucas, gaze now resting on the woodpile. "Beatrice Bateman."

And he never cried for her. By the time she physically died, he felt as though he had already lost her a long time ago and the sadness had become a part of him. He no longer noticed it; nor did he notice its gradual easing away again.

Ros shifted next to him, so they were sat pressed up against each other. As though the physical proximity broke the final barrier between them, tears began to leak silently from his eyes. He didn't try to stop them, not after all these years of waiting. Ros didn't notice until he sniffed, whereupon she laced her fingers through his, removing the cold cup of tea with her free hand as she did so. He hadn't noticed, but he'd been biting into the polystyrene rim with his teeth as the memories came trickling back.

"It all happened so fast," he said. "Senegal, Mi5 and Russia. A meaningless whirlwind of activity that only stopped once I was locked up. Then they break you down, destroy what you were so you forget you were ever human. Then, if you're lucky, you get out, but when you do, you have rebuild yourself from scratch. After eight years of being nothing, what you were before you went in ceased to have relevance near a decade before. And all the time, I should have been here."

He needed to tell his father that. Would he have understood? Lucas would never know, and it was the not knowing that made it hurt all the more. The tears came in convulsions: who did he cry for now? His mother, his poor abandoned father, everything that should have been. Because none of it should have been like this. He thought that joining MI5 would atone for Dakar, but in the end, it had only made things worse. Dakar, that turned out to be a vicious hoax all along. But his parents would never know about that, they remembered him as he was. A slightly gawky teenager, fumbling into silly romances.

"You couldn't have known," said Ros.

"But I should have guessed," he admitted, ineptly thumbing away the tears.

He tried to turn away from Ros, but she held him in place. "You couldn't have returned here," she pointed out. "Not with … everything else. What if it placed your father in danger?"

He would have known the truth. Maybe that was more important than everything else, after all? He extricated one of his hands from Ros' and swiped at the tears on his face. When he was finished, Ros pulled him over to her, letting him bury his face in her shoulder while she held on to him. Vertical with each other, Lucas let himself sag against her, no longer pretending to hold back on any emotion.

"It'll be alright," she whispered, while he continued to choke and sob into her shoulder. Damp patches spread out against the dark fabric the cardigan she wore. "It'll be alright," she repeated.

He didn't know how much time had passed, but it was growing dark, when he began to stabilise again. His throat felt raw, like he'd been shouting his memories out for the whole world to hear. But as the raw, churning grief did begin to flatten, it was gradually replaced by a feeling of flat despondency. He sniffed, turned his face so his cheek was resting on Ros' now soaked shoulder. She had been rocking him while he broke down, slowly caressing the back of his neck. Sushing and promising him that "it'll be alright."

Drained and exhausted, he still lay propped up against Ros when she leaned down to kiss him. A kiss to which he responded accordingly, kissing her back slowly, powerless to resist. But their lips met only briefly, before his head – feeling as though his brain had been swapped for lead – fell back to her shoulder. With one fist curled around her shirt, he stayed like that until she ushered him up to bed, imploring him to get some sleep as she slipped into fussing mode. As worn out as his small meltdown had left him, he still lay awake for an hour after Ros had helped him into bed. When she came to check on him, he pretended to be asleep, but all the time he was thinking of the anonymous letter his father got, telling him his son was dead and buried under a Mangrove tree in Senegal. Was it Vaughan, or was it the other Lucas North? Only the other Lucas North knew where he lived.

In that moment, he knew what he had to do. There could be no more running now. He would meet the man himself, instead of waiting to be hunted down like an animal. Lucas estimated his chances of surviving this meeting as minimal, but he honestly didn't care anymore. He was what the fake Lucas wanted, and he was in mood to resist. His only concern was getting to the fake Lucas without the others finding out and stopping him. But he had to do it; he had to exorcise this ghost once and for all.


End file.
